Merge Conflicts as Metaphor
A late-conversation move where Jacob and David realize that software engineering vocabulary maps unusually well onto spiritual / collective-coordination problems.
The line
Jacob:
"I think that the wiser one can win. Really, most of issues in the world, since we're all one nervous system, are just merge conflicts."
David:
"You have to rebase, yeah, exactly."
Jacob:
"It's called first principles. Go back in first principles, guys. Rebase your ontology."
"Software engineering was a surprisingly good metaphor for a lot of spiritual concepts. It's an art that is in touch with reality, so it encounters the same problems as reality. That makes a lot of sense."
The mapping
| Software | World |
|---|---|
| Branches diverging | Cultures / individuals developing in isolation |
| Merge conflict | Disagreement |
| Rebase | Returning to first principles |
git log of common ancestry |
Shared substrate / pre-verbal common ground |
| Merge resolution by "wiser one" | Whichever framework integrates more, wins |
| Bad merge / dropped commits | Loss of cultural memory |
| Rewriting history | Revising shared narrative |
Why the metaphor isn't accidental
Jacob's claim: software engineering "encounters the same problems as reality" because it is a craft of building coherent systems from many partial contributors. So its problem-vocabulary is isomorphic to the problem-vocabulary of any large coordinated system, including a civilization.
This is consistent with the wider One Nervous System picture: humanity is a coupled dynamical system whose parts diverge and (occasionally) re-merge.
"Wiser one wins" — what does it mean?
The claim isn't moral ("the morally better person always wins"). It's structural:
- A more integrated worldview (one that has already merged in more perspectives) is more capable of merging in further ones.
- A less integrated worldview hits constant conflicts because it can't accommodate the new branch.
- Over enough iterations, the more integrated framework will absorb the less integrated one.
This is implicitly an argument for stage progression: see Stages of Adult Development. Higher-stage frameworks can include lower-stage ones; lower-stage frameworks find higher-stage behavior illegible and resist it.
"Rebase your ontology"
The funny line, but worth taking seriously. To rebase in git: pause your work, replay your changes on top of the new common ancestor, deal with conflicts as they come.
To "rebase your ontology": pause your worldview, take it back to first principles, replay your conclusions on top of those first principles given current information, deal with conflicts as they come.
This is what Jacob means by first principles in the conversation — not the Elon-Musk reductive-physics sense, but the substrate-level common-ground sense.
When merging fails
Sometimes a merge conflict can't be resolved, because two branches genuinely require incompatible assumptions. In code, this happens. In worldviews, Jacob seems to think it's much rarer than it appears:
"I think that the wiser one can win."
The optimistic reading: most apparent worldview-conflicts are resolvable given enough patience and the right shared substrate. The few that aren't are the genuine paradigm differences.
Related
- One Nervous System — the substrate that makes "merge" coherent
- Stages of Adult Development — why higher stages can absorb lower
- Pure Vision — what successful merge looks like (seeing soul-authenticity through conflict)