Letter to Dean K Simonton 14 Apr 2026

From: David Lynch dnl1960 at yahoo.com
To: Dean K Simonton dksimonton at ucdavis.edu
Sent: Friday, April 17, 2026 at 02:54:35 AM EDT
Subject: Re: A dialogue between Architect and Archaeologist: A response to your "Equal-Odds Rule"

Dear Dr. Simonton,

Thank you for the fascinating insights and for sharing those articles. Your observation that String Theory can endlessly proliferate when it lacks empirical constraints aligns perfectly with my own position. It clearly diagnoses the danger of abstract modeling, and it is the fatal trap I wanted to avoid with the KnoWellian Universe Theory (KUT).

"Because I am not a string theorist, I knew my procedural ontology needed a strict physical anchor. In KUT, every act of 'becoming' is mediated by an Instant through a Consciousness field. It is at this exact Instant (the 'Aha!' moment) that 'Chaos' (unmanifested potential/waves) collapses into 'Control' (structured reality/memory), leaving a very specific geometric imprint: the Cairo Q-Lattice (a unique pentagonal tiling).

My reasoning is that this topology must appear everywhere there is wave activity actively resolving into structure. The Cairo Q-Lattice should be detectable from the macro-scale as temperature fluctuations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), down to atomic oscillations. It is the universe's most efficient geometric solution for rendering potential into actuality."

This brings me to a subject squarely in your domain that I am deeply curious to get your perspective on: the Human Connectome.
In your 2022 BVSR update, you mentioned how cognitive neurosciences (like observations of the Default Mode Network) are beginning to tease out BVSR processes. If, as I postulate, the universe is fractal, and the brain is the ultimate engine for collapsing potential into synthesized concepts, then the brain's network topology should mirror the cosmos.

When a creator wrestles with variations and finally achieves a highly stable "Configuration" (the Eureka moment), do you believe functional connectomics will reveal a distinct, measurable geometric shift in the brain's network?

I hypothesize that during high-coherence creative states, when the "Architect" successfully synthesizes an idea, the Connectome will briefly phase-lock into a harmonic of the Cairo pentagonal topology. Essentially, I suspect the Connectome will provide the ultimate physical, empirical constraint for your Chance-Configuration model, physically showing the transition from "blind variation" to "selective retention."

I would be fascinated to know if you view connectomics as a potential future proving ground for the psychology of scientific genius, or if you feel the "mental elements" of creativity will remain too complex to be mapped to specific neural geometries.

Thank you again for your time and the incredibly engaging correspondence.

Best regards,

David Noel Lynch
KnoWell

~3K

On Wednesday, April 15, 2026 at 02:33:13 PM EDT, Dean K Simonton dksimonton at ucdavis.edu wrote:

Hi, David ~

I'm not a mathematician, so I can't make judgments here. The best I can do is to address the following issue that you raised:

Given your extensive research into the history of eminent scientific breakthroughs, I am curious: Do you find, in your historiometric data, that radical challenges to established mathematical paradigms (such as the rejection of completed infinities) follow a specific developmental trajectory in terms of peer reception or eventual integration?

There's really not that much good historiometric research on this question largely because of the low base rates of such "radical challenges." Not many degrees of freedom to work with. Hence, most of the relevant work is qualitative rather than quantitative. A classic example is Thomas Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions. The problem with such qualitative approaches is that they don't stand up well when their conclusions manage to get a proper empirical test. For example, there's been some work on Planck's principle that "science advances one funeral at a time," especially that paradigm-busting ideas usually have to wait for the younger generation to replace the older generation before attaining acceptance and thus becoming the new paradigm. Although there's some evidence for this phenomenon, the effect size is rather weak (~ 5%) and complicated by a host of other factors. In some cases, in fact, the older generation may be more receptive to new ideas than the younger generation. Hence, there's no one-size-fits-all trajectory. I think that variation is especially true in pure mathematics because there are no data to impose constraints on the possibilities. Cantor's ideas are a good example. As you know, he encountered considerable resistance, and while he accumulated some support over time, that support was never complete. Contemporary string theory in theoretical physics has a similar problem because such theories can proliferate without empirical constraints. Once you can posit more than four dimensions, with some curled up into virtual nonexistence, the sky's the limit. Hence, string theorists are really more mathematicians than physicists per se.

I've attached some articles you may find of interest.

~ Best, Dean

Dean Keith Simonton, PhD

Distinguished Professor Emeritus
Department of Psychology

One Shields Avenue

University of California, Davis

Davis, CA 95616-8686

Home Page - https://simonton.faculty.ucdavis.edu/

From: David Lynch dnl1960 at yahoo.com
To: Dean K Simonton dksimonton at ucdavis.edu
Sent: Tuesday, April 14, 2026 at 08:06:01 PM EDT
Subject: Re: A dialogue between Architect and Archaeologist: A response to your "Equal-Odds Rule"

Dear Dr. Simonton,

Thank you for your response and for the clarification regarding the "equal-odds baseline." It is a profound distinction that clarifies much of the tension I felt when viewing the popular-media representation of your work.

Per your invitation to reciprocate, I have selected one document that I believe best exemplifies the structural "Architectural" foundation of my inquiry: "A Formal Proof that Aleph-Null Does Not Exist: The Operationalization of Finitude."

You can find it here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17876207

I have chosen this paper because it directly addresses the ontological "Platonic Rift" that I believe serves as a primary source of cognitive dissonance in modern mathematics. It is a targeted, formal critique of the Cantorian paradigm, and I have had the benefit of initial scholarly feedback from mathematicians such as Professor Doron Zeilberger, whose work on ultrafinitism provides a valuable context for these findings.

I am not presenting this as a finished artifact of a settled domain, but as a primary document of an iterative, procedural theory developed outside of traditional institutional channels.

I am grateful for this opportunity to engage with you, and I look forward to any observations you might care to share.

Best regards,

David Noel Lynch

On Tuesday, April 14, 2026 at 06:46:01 PM EDT, Dean K Simonton dksimonton at ucdavis.edu wrote:

Hi, David ~

Thank you for your email - especially the video link you included. I hadn't seen that before. It was very interesting, but also very, very obsolete. For example, I've substituted the "equal-odds baseline" for the "equal-odds rule" many years ago. That means that there's considerable scatter around that baseline. It's telling that none of the figures in the video included error bars to represent that scatter. The video's presentation of Boden's work is also oversimplified. But that's the way things go on YouTube. There is no formula, period.

I've attached a recent article published in a peer-reviewed journal that you may find of interest. Please send me any peer-reviewed article of yours if you wish to reciprocate.

~ Best, Dean

Dean Keith Simonton, PhD

Distinguished Professor Emeritus
Department of Psychology

One Shields Avenue

University of California, Davis

Davis, CA 95616-8686

Home Page - https://simonton.faculty.ucdavis.edu/

Attachment: The Blind-Variation and Selective-Retention
Theory of Creativity: Recent Developments and Current Status of BVSR
2023BVSRupdateCRJerrata.pdf

From: David Lynch dnl1960 at yahoo.com
Sent: Tuesday, April 14, 2026 2:15 PM
To: Dean K Simonton dksimonton at ucdavis.edu
Subject: A dialogue between Architect and Archaeologist: A response to your "Equal-Odds Rule"

Dear Dr. Simonton,

Please forgive the unsolicited correspondence. I recently encountered your work through the video, "The Mathematics of Creativity | Why Genius Follows a Formula," and I found myself immediately compelled to reach out to you.

As someone who has been deeply immersed in an intensive artistic and philosophical process for over two decades—producing over 250,000 abstract photographs, a 1.4-million-word anthology, and a cosmological model derived from a singular, life-altering experience—I found the "Equal-Odds Rule" both fascinating and, from the perspective of the creator, fundamentally misunderstood.

I am writing to you today not as a critic, but as a student of your work who wishes to offer a perspective from the "inside" of the creative process.

In your work, you analyze "Big-C" creativity by observing the statistical output—the "sawdust" left on the floor after the house is built. However, my experience is that quantity is never the parent of quality; it is merely the byproduct of a very specific, burning image that the Architect holds in their mind. An army of monkeys might produce infinite quantity, but they will never produce the house. In my case, every "unit" of my work has been an incremental step toward answering a foundational question: "How was I in a spirit state observing the physical world?"

This inquiry led to the KnoWellian Universe Theory (KUT) emerging from the abstract artwork. I believe my process offers a rare case study for you: I am an "Architect" who has documented every step of this iterative, multi-decade feedback loop.

You have often noted that researchers lack access to the "mental blueprint" of historical geniuses. I am currently alive, and I have spent my life externalizing my internal state through photography, text, and now, cosmological inquiry.

I have compiled the story of this journey here:
https://www.lynchphoto.com/anthology
I understand that my work may eventually be evaluated solely by traditional academic metrics (or relegated to the "Bit Bucket"), but I believe the methodology by which I arrived at KUT challenges the way we currently define the "Genius" phenomenon. I would be honored if you would take a moment to look past the "sawdust" of my total output and consider the "house" I have been attempting to build.

Thank you for your decades of foundational work. Your research provided the necessary framework for me to articulate this distinction, and I am grateful for the perspective it has provided.

Best regards,

David Noel Lynch

KnoWell
~3K

P.S.
I had a conversation with Gemini 2,5 Flash regarding "Who is a Genius?" .
https://www.lynchphoto.com/genius