Coupling Geometry

Civilisations do not fall because they cannot see the cliff. They fall because, past a certain point, they can no longer act on what they see.

Coupling Geometry proposes that a single variable — coupling, the degree to which a society's decision-making, extraction, information channels, and subsystems are bound together — governs the trajectory of civilisations. Below a measurable threshold, systems correct themselves. Above it, correction fails in a lawful way: warnings become career risks, bad news bends toward good, and decline reads as strength through the very channels meant to detect it. The approach is gradual. The crossing is sudden. And the crossing consumes the capacity needed to return.

Drawing on thirty case studies spanning four millennia — Rome, Byzantium, the Maya, the Soviet Union, modern China and more — the book maps the threshold, the descent routes history records, and the conditions under which recovery has actually occurred. Its claims are stated to be tested: the data, methods, and dated public forecasts sit in open-access deposits, the first forecast resolves in December 2026, and the programme has already published one retraction. This is a theory built to be attacked — and to be useful whether it survives.