The World Model is a quantitative and universal framework for analyzing the evolution of energy into the survival machinery of life. In this model, programs are treated as actors that utilize energy to construct and operate physical mechanisms necessary for their self-preservation and replication. We apply principles of economics to model the interactions between these programs.
Programs interact through transactions, aiming to maximize their profit, defined as the acquisition of future energy usable for self-replication. The model focuses on market efficiency and pricing mechanisms as levers for redesigning programs—akin to driving institutional change. Crucially, it incorporates social currency markets, where barter-like exchanges with unclear settlement terms dominate, into the broader economic analysis.
The resulting market equilibrium enables the most efficient allocation of energy toward self-replication. This maximization of future replicative potential is proxied by metrics such as the Nasdaq index—representing aggregate capitalized capacity for self-sustaining energy use.
This framework resolves key issues in behavioral irrationality, unifies neuroeconomics and institutional economics, and revitalizes memenomics by embedding programs as economic agents. Furthermore, it integrates physical principles into discussions of consciousness and meaning, offering a measurable, energy-based definition of the goal of life.

At its core, the model conceptualizes humankind as a symbiotic system of programs aimed at maximizing future usable energy for self-replication. As currency is a control right over the use of energy, the programs maximize their net present value of the currency. These programs define physical mechanisms and their interactions, leveraging energy to store and reproduce themselves. Mechanisms engage in transactions across various markets to gain more currency, with social currency markets being among the most manipulated. Changes in transaction prices directly influence the profits and survival strategies of mechanisms and more importantly of the underlying programs. To effect behavioral change in a survival mechanism, the model recommends altering prices to make desirable strategies profitable and undesirable ones loss-making.
The framework emphasizes identifying beneficiaries of the change to sponsor the price adjustment and compensations for any losses incurred. Strategic focus should be placed on modifying transaction taxes—such as criminal penalties, bribes, contract enforcement costs, and entry barriers—allowing supply and demand dynamics to regulate pricing autonomously. Yet, we consider taxes as a result of transactions of mechanisms profiting from them.
Furthermore, the model accounts for the total impact on market capitalization to ensure sustainable outcomes. Neglecting this broader impact may enable adversarial strategies to reverse changes, accompanied by demands for compensation. Price contagion across capital markets is used to align mechanisms toward symbiotic goal of overall viability - capitalization, with indices like Nasdaq serving as practical proxies for evaluation.
Want to print your doc?
This is not the way.
Try clicking the ⋯ next to your doc name or using a keyboard shortcut (
CtrlP
) instead.