Papers
Published work
Every paper is listed with the public URL of its full text, and with its data and analysis code where they are public — which is the default for both programs.
Semiotics and Influence Research · 2026-10-03
The Missing Minute: Phase, Memory and Waiting in “Every X Minutes” Claims
Caleb Gottfried · Preprint (GitHub)
A claim that an event happens “every X minutes” seems to need two numbers, an interval and the minute it starts, yet only the first is ever given. The paper shows that the start minute exists exactly when the process has a spectral line at frequency 1/X, and that it then belongs to each realization rather than to any statistic. It defines phase memory, the number of events over which a schedule stays predictable, shows that it never fades only for a schedule with stationary errors, and gives a corrected Rayleigh test, since the standard test rejects at rate α^(1/τ) when memory is present. In the 1985 Old Faithful record the geyser keeps time 2.6 times more precisely over two eruptions than over one and remembers its phase for about five eruptions, while an apparent periodicity across the record vanishes once memory is accounted for. British coal-mining disasters show the opposite type: no phase, no memory, and a mean wait three times the naive one. Every “every X” claim should come with its coefficient of variation and its phase memory.
Independent · 2026-10-03
Folded, Not Forgotten: Seeds, Cycles and the Persistence of Information
Caleb Gottfried · Preprint (GitHub)
Tests the Fold Hypothesis: that the universe began from a seed that fixes everything, that knowing the seed would allow complete prediction, that free will is therefore an illusion, and that the universe cycles while every trace of each cycle is folded into the next seed. Complete prediction from an exact seed holds in principle, but it needs exactness, storage that only a compact seed allows, and a predictor outside what it predicts. Libertarian free will does not survive determinism; compatibilist free will does, and any prediction of a choice has to compute the deliberation that is the choice. The main result is a consistency theorem: endless cycles, entropy carried across cycles and traces that last forever are compatible only if the dynamics preserve fine-grained information, which is also what most physicists now expect of black holes. A reversible toy universe illustrates the result, and the paper lists observations that could refute the cosmological claims.
Independent · 2026-10-03
Do What You Want, Permanently: The W2FPL, a WTFPL Derivative with an Explicit Irrevocable Grant and a Warranty Disclaimer
Caleb Gottfried · Zenodo · doi:10.5281/zenodo.23121447
The WTFPL is among the shortest free licenses in use, but it never states the scope, duration or revocability of its grant and has no disclaimer of warranty or liability. The paper presents the W2FPL, version 1, a renamed derivative that closes both gaps while keeping the one-sentence grant and its voice: clause 1 states the grant as free, worldwide, permanent and irrevocable, in the terms of CC0's fallback license, and clause 4 disclaims warranty and liability. It analyzes each clause, compares the license with six permissive alternatives, describes its governance, and reports its first deployment as the data license of two public datasets.
Semiotics and Influence Research · 2025-09-07
Ticketstorm as Mass Visual Disruption
Caleb Gottfried · SSRN · doi:10.2139/ssrn.5454695
Examines Ticketstorm — the distribution of 100,000 orange parking-ticket facsimiles across New York City — as a controlled cultural experiment in large-scale urban disruption. The stunt is treated as a case study in guerrilla communication, symbolic authority and ephemeral propaganda: by borrowing the visual language of law enforcement and municipal power it works at once as art, advertisement and social commentary. The paper's hypothesis is that a physical deployment of replicated objects, scaled to mimic the presence of a governing body, can shift public perception, accelerate media coverage and generate myth without institutional backing, and that high-density visual information interferes with the cognitive filters people normally apply to it.