Luiz von Paumgartten is a patent attorney and the author of The Abstractionist’s Papers, which he makes free at WelcomeToTheBlueSpace.com. Our friend Ed Brenegar introduced him. Mark “Moose” McGrath and I found him working on many of the same ideas we do, in a different language.
Red space and blue space
Luiz separates meaning from happening. Blue space is raw reality. Red space is the mind’s interpretive world. Signals cross a boundary between the two, and the mind turns them into meaning. He argues that information is variation until a mind gives it meaning, and that people never exchange meaning directly.
Paradox and novelty
Luiz treats a paradox as a gap between an interpretation and an expectation. You close it by reinterpreting, updating or revising the rule. He argues that novelty emerges when carrying the mismatch costs more than reconfiguring orientation. We connect that to Boyd’s Destruction and Creation, the free energy principle and its drive to minimize surprise, the Tao and allostasis.
Orientation at the center
Luiz describes orientation as the engine that shapes perception, prediction and action. That fits John Boyd’s real OODA loop, where orientation sits at the center. A linear picture of the loop misses how learning spirals. For leaders, Luiz’s advice is to invest in orientation, build cleaner signals and change how they relate to rules that are failing.
Which of your rules is carrying a mismatch right now?
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Written by Ponch Rivera with AI assistance in production. The full conversation is in the player below.