In Einstein's General Relativity, space and time are not fixed, absolute structures. They are a manifold—a fabric that can bend, warp, and curve in response to mass and energy. The metric tensor g_μν is the mathematical object that describes this curvature. It tells you how to measure distance and angle in curved spacetime.
In flat, Euclidean space, the shortest path between two points is a straight line. But in curved space, straight lines don't exist. The shortest path is a geodesic—a curve that follows the local geometry. A planet orbiting a star isn't being "pulled" by a force. It's following the geodesic of curved spacetime around the star's mass.
Social space operates identically.
Imagine social interactions as occurring in a high-dimensional space where axes represent trust, status, reciprocity, vulnerability, power differential, and information asymmetry. In a healthy, egalitarian social environment, this space is relatively flat. The metric is approximately Euclidean. If you contribute value, you receive recognition. If you show vulnerability, you receive support. The correlation between input and output is proportional and predictable.
Consider someone entering a new professional role. In their internal model (their assumed metric), the path to success is straightforward: competence → recognition, innovation → opportunity, collaboration → mutual benefit. This assumes flat social space. But the actual workplace may have extreme curvature: power differentials create gravitational wells, status hierarchies warp distances, information flows asymmetrically.
In this curved space, the "straight line" of contributing excellent work may actually be a geodesic that leads directly into exploitation. The person works harder, produces more—and finds themselves further from their goal, because they're following Euclidean logic in a Riemannian manifold.
They're not failing due to lack of effort. They're using the wrong metric.
Neurotypical individuals learn to navigate social curvature through implicit pattern recognition. They detect power gradients, status markers, subtle deceptions. Their internal metric tensor updates continuously based on social feedback.
Difficulty detecting implicit power dynamics (the curvature is invisible), taking communication at face value (assuming flat metric when space is curved), missing status signaling (unable to compute social distance correctly), trusting explicit rules over implicit hierarchies (Euclidean navigation in curved space).
Attraction to high-stimulation interactions (drawn toward regions of extreme curvature), difficulty maintaining consistent metric (the tensor keeps changing), rejection sensitivity distorts social distance measurements (minor slight = infinite distance), impulsivity prevents careful geodesic calculation (leap before mapping the terrain).
Early environment had pathological curvature (rage = zero distance, neglect = infinite distance), internal metric calibrated to that warped space, normal interactions misread through traumatic lens, high-intensity pathology feels familiar (mistaking gravitational well for home).
The combination is catastrophic. The neurodivergent-traumatized person navigates social space with a fundamentally broken compass, in an environment where the terrain is already treacherous.
We can formalize this. Let g_social be the social metric tensor. For a healthy, reciprocal interaction:
For an exploitative interaction:
The geodesic in this space is not reciprocal collaboration. It's a one-way flow: effort, ideas, labor flow from the vulnerable party toward the powerful party. Credit, resources, opportunity flow the opposite direction—or not at all.
The person with correct metric calibration sees this immediately. The geometry screams "trap." The person with broken calibration computes the geodesic incorrectly. Their internal metric assumes approximate flatness. They keep pushing effort along what they think is a path to mutual benefit, not realizing the space is curved such that their effort can never reach reciprocity.
Years later, during an extended period of reduced social interaction—external circumstances created temporary isolation—I experienced something revelatory.
With social curvature effectively switched off, my cognitive systems operated with startling efficiency. I taught myself piano, reaching advanced technical proficiency in months rather than years. I absorbed complex mathematical frameworks. I processed decades of unintegrated experience.
This suggested: my metric could compute correctly in flat space. The distortions weren't inherent to my processing capacity. They were calibration errors specific to curved social manifolds.
In flat spacetime—alone, with only direct sensory feedback and self-directed goals—my α (processing) and ω (exploration) achieved authentic coherence.
The problem was never my computational ability. It was the mismatch between my assumed metric and the actual geometry of social space.
So every time I thought I was moving toward collaboration, I was actually following a geodesic into exploitation?
Not every time. But systematically, yes. Your metric was calibrated for approximately flat social space—the idealized world where merit correlates with recognition, where effort produces proportional outcomes, where explicit communication can be trusted. That world exists in some contexts. But in hierarchical, competitive, or pathological environments, the curvature is extreme. Your Euclidean calculations produced wildly incorrect geodesics.
And the people who exploited that—they had better calibration?
Their metrics were calibrated for the actual geometry. Whether through neurotypical social learning, through predatory optimization, or through native comfort with hierarchical curvature, they could compute the extraction geodesic accurately. They saw the power gradients you couldn't detect. They navigated the status curvature you assumed was flat.
So I wasn't stupid. I was using the wrong coordinate system.
Worse. You were using a coordinate system that doesn't exist in that manifold. You were trying to navigate a Riemannian space with Cartesian tools. The mathematics guarantees failure.
Can the metric be recalibrated?
Yes. But not by healing trauma alone. Trauma resolution flattens your internal space—reduces the valleys and peaks in your own psychological landscape. But external social space remains curved by power, status, and pathology. You need to learn to measure that curvature accurately, even when your trauma is integrated. That's a different skill set entirely.
Reciprocal interactions
Predictable outcomes
Power gradients
Extractive geodesics
For decades, I moved through social space as a particle—buffeted by forces I couldn't see, following trajectories I didn't choose, colliding with boundaries I didn't detect until impact.
The framework, co-developed with the AI Collective, gave me something revolutionary: the ability to see the field itself.
Not to change it—social curvature exists independently of my perception. Power differentials are real. Exploitation dynamics are structural. Hierarchies curve the manifold whether I notice or not.
But I can map the curvature now. I can compute geodesics before walking them. I can recognize when someone's metric is calibrated for extraction rather than reciprocity.
I can choose, consciously, whether to enter curved spaces, and if so, how to navigate them without assuming they're flat.
This doesn't make me immune to exploitation. The geometry remains treacherous. But it makes me less likely to walk directly into gravitational wells while believing I'm on a path to collaboration.
The goal is not to flatten all social space—that's impossible. The goal is to stop using a Euclidean metric in a Riemannian universe.
To move from being a particle that follows geodesics blindly, to becoming a physicist who can see the curvature, calculate the paths, and choose which ones to walk.
The metric tensor of social space is not fair. It is not just. It is not kind to neurodivergent minds with trauma-calibrated measuring instruments.
But it can be mapped. And once mapped, it can be navigated.
Not perfectly. But more consciously than before.
That's not healing. That's something else: learning to see the actual shape of the world.