What the F*CK?!

Toggling Between Worlds Like a Viking: Intelligence as a Cycle of Control and Creation

Jul 19, 2025

Intelligence operates as a dynamic cycle of compression and decompression. We begin by ingesting raw data or ‘tuning in’ — observations, experiences, signals — and (in proportion to our intelligence) distilling them into compact, predictive schemas: causal recipes that capture the essence of what we’ve learned. As we deploy our mental models, neuroscientifically speaking we continuously monitor two internal gauges: one tracking our confidence in the schema’s accuracy or effectiveness, the other flagging rising uncertainty or prediction error. When confidence stays high and uncertainty remains low, we fully commit to our strategy, exploiting its power with focus.

But few single models survive intact for a lifetime, and many are only useful as passing conjectures. When uncertainty spikes past our thresholds, confidence erodes, and we (again in proportion to our intelligence) let go, shifting to ‘release into explore’ mode.

Ever had those ‘what the f**k’ moments! We can learn to act on those decisively if they are themselves decisive. We loosen existing schemas, intentionally exploring and discovering novel associations and hypotheses. In this phase, we tolerate ambiguity and entertain wild ideas — exactly the creative spark that would be stifled if we clung too tightly to yesterday’s framework. Any fresh pattern that withstands scrutiny is then woven back into a reframed schema, compressing our new insight into a more potent form.

Lock down, launch forward, let go and relaunch

This oscillation — lock down, launch forward, let go, and relaunch — is the heart of adaptive intelligence and wellbeing. It balances the sometimes ruthless efficiency of exploitation and existing structures, with the courage needed for letting go of what one has for curiosity of exploration. By mastering both halves of the loop, we may not only secure reliable performance in familiar territory but also unlock breakthroughs when the old map no longer guides us. Continuous compression and strategic decompression keep us agile, ensuring that our mental models evolve in step with the ever-shifting landscape of reality.

Being ego-free in this process is liberating - since much wasted energy and even suffering - is caused by overcommitment to outworn mental models and becoming disconnected from the embodied and generative realities sustaining us.

Trident G Theory

Human intelligence thrives on a dynamic play between two modes in a ‘g loop’ - a universal algorithm running over many scales in the brain: exploitation, where we compress information into tight, reliable models and deploy them with confidence, and exploration & creativity, where we deliberately loosen those models to probe and gain insights into new hypotheses and possibilities. This compression–decompression cycle is founded on cross-frequency brain oscillations (θ–γ nesting) that support both creative insight and rule-based control and the ‘offline’ hippocampal replay that refines our mental schemas during rest and sleep. The cycle is underpinned by dopaminergic meta-signals (D1 vs D2) that gate our switch between high-confidence “exploit” states and curiosity-driven “explore” states. Mastering the balance of these modes — exploiting what we know and exploring or creating what we don’t, and coasting on structures that have become second nature — are what allows us to build lasting expertise while still innovating when the old map no longer fits the terrain.

g Energetics

Managing the compression–decompression cycle with an eye on your brain’s natural energetics is what turns effort into motivated ‘flow’. Think of your mental energy — Spearman’s g — not as a mysterious force but as the product of three synergistic processes unfolding in harmony. First, the Prediction Pulse (your alpha‐wave peaks) propels your thoughts forward, charging each moment with anticipatory momentum. Next, the Domino Effect of Ideas (neural avalanches) fans out that momentum into a cascade of connections, like one insight triggering many more with minimal extra fuel. Finally, the Focus Booster (η‐driven compression) cranks down distractions and packs more punch into each cognitive cycle, squeezing out metabolic waste and converting every ATP molecule into richer predictions. By fluidly shifting between exploit mode (lock in on compressed schemas when confidence is high) and explore/create mode (loosen those schemas when uncertainty rises), you tune these three currents into a self‐reinforcing g-Loop. The result is sustainable intellectual horsepower — your brain locked into its critical sweet spot, flowing through problems and setbacks with both precision and creativity.

Dual Modes of Fluid Intelligence

To further explore these modes, consider the question: Do we leverage proven strategies and realities defining the niches or ‘spaces’ we occupy or venture into the unknown to find other ones that may better nourish and support our adaptive intelligence in any domain?

Exploitation (Compress & Commit): When our internal confidence gauge (η) is high and uncertainty (χ) is low, we lock in on compressed schemas — our “causal recipes”—and apply them swiftly and efficiently to familiar problems. This mode is underpinned by D1-mediated dopamine signalling, which reinforces focus and persistence on known solutions.
- Example: Imagine you and your partner have developed a reliable conflict-resolution pattern: whenever you disagree, you both take five minutes to cool off, then each speaks in turn for two minutes without interruption. Because this schema has worked before, your confidence gauge (η) is high and uncertainty (χ) is low. You deploy it immediately—no second-guessing—resolving the spat quickly and preserving goodwill. Here you are using a tried-and-tested “if A, then B” recipe — compressing past experience into a ready-to-run strategy.
Exploration (Decompress & Discover): When prediction errors mount or η falls, the brain flips to D2-mediated dopamine mode, loosening schema constraints and boosting cognitive flexibility. In this state, we tolerate ambiguity, test novel ideas and run with unexpected associations
- Now suppose that recently, every time you’ve followed that five-minute rule when you clash with your partner, the disagreement resurfaces later, or new issues crop up. Your uncertainty (χ) rises and your confidence (η) in the old pattern falls. In response, you shift into explore mode: perhaps you experiment with journaling your feelings first, or you invite a trusted friend to mediate, or you try an entirely different way of listening — like mirroring back your partner’s words before replying. You tolerate the awkwardness of a novel approach, test what works, and gradually refine a new conflict-resolution recipe. Here you’ve loosened the constraints of your old schema, embraced ambiguity, and searched for fresh patterns that better fit the evolving reality of your relationship.

This oscillation hinges on nested θ–γ oscillations, where fast γ bursts within slower θ/δ cycles simultaneously drive both limbs of processing: creative pattern‐search and stable rule-application and exploitation.

Fluid g World-Making

Note that the ‘reality’ our intelligence navigates itself isn’t fixed to one script — be it the engineer’s blueprint, the economist’s market logic or the careerist’s ladder. Thanks to our creative/explore mode, we can construct alternative worlds — new niches or spaces governed by different norms, values and stories — and then step into them, learn their rhythms, and step back out refreshed.

This isn’t mere daydreaming or a curated online illusion: it’s baked into our evolved predictive‐processing brains. Our brain continuously generates a Bayesian “best guess” of the world — an collectively in any culture this can be thought of as a shared hallucination we all tacitly agree to live by. As higher primates, we also share the ‘higher primate’ hallucination in our very sensory systems, according to the cognitive neuroscientist Anil Seth. When χ rises, or self-efficacy increases to the point of bordome or stagnation, we can loosen those collective scripts, and experiment with novel frameworks and test how well they nourish our values and capacities. In doing so, we don’t just adapt to one imposed reality; we co-create many possible realities, choosing when to inhabit each and when to return to the “main” world with fresh insights. This fluid dance of compressing into agreed‐upon norms and decompression into new worlds underpins both our deepest creativity and our most enduring self‐mastery and evolution.

Importantly, every self-constructed niche comes with its own causal scaffolding and relational structure — its own independent “syntax” or “logos” of how things connect and unfold. Trident G reminds us that, even as we co-create alternate worlds, our g-Loop must continually calibrate to each world’s underlying structures. Only by compressing into schemas that faithfully mirror a domain’s causal map — and by deploying abductive and active-inference routines to test and refine them — can we interact effectively and evolve within any reality we choose or create. At its heart, the theory posits a “structured other” we can discover, understand, and become attuned to.

Neurodynamics of the g-Loop: The Universal Algorithm of Intelligence

Beneath the exploitation–exploration tension lies a deeper set of neural gates and loops that implement our universal intelligence algorithm - the g Loop. Trident G theory identifies three core meta-gates — each tied to a mode of cognition — that regulate how we compress, consolidate, and creatively expand our internal models and model-free automatic routines:

Consolidation Gate → Gc (Crystallised Intelligence)

Hippocampal Replay & Schema Automatisation: During sleep or quiet rest, the hippocampus replays recent experiences at high speed and ‘off-line’ - out of conscious experience. Informative fragments are strengthened, predictable details pruned — an ‘information bits-back’ compression that embeds robust schemas into neocortex for long-term use. The result is a stable, hopefully well-tuned generative model (crystallised intelligence) that captures reliable causal regularities - your crystallised know-how and ‘autopilot’ established routines and affordances in life. This often underlies our sense of intuitive understanding and whether something feels right.

Creative Gf Branch → Novel Discrimination & Abductive Leap

γ-Nested in θ/δ for Exploration: Fast gamma (γ) bursts, gated by slower θ and δ cycles, transiently loosen existing schemas to let the brain recombine ideas and generate abductive hypotheses (“inference to the best explanation”).
Abduction + Active Inference: Those hypotheses feed into an active‐inference loop: deductively predict (“If X, then Y?”) and then inductively update your model in light of mismatches. The outcome is a fresh candidate schema that both explains anomalies and seeds true novelty.

Control Gf Branch → Rule Maintenance & Application

γ-Nested for Exploitation: When your meta-signals report low uncertainty (χ) and high confidence (η), gamma (γ) bursts instead synchronise and stabilise the precise rules distilled by Gc (crystallised schemas), deploying them reliably on new inputs. The smooth, efficient execution of well-practised strategies — the control mode that flexibly applies learned rules in real time. It also allows us to rapidly absorb rules and follow them with self-control.

By toggling between these two Gf branches — each using γ-nesting within θ/δ but in opposite service (one to break free, the other to hold fast) — Trident G captures both our capacity for bold insight and our power to apply it with precision.

The Downside of Crystallisation: Subcritical Stagnation

Without continual challenge, even our most finely compressed schemas harden into rigid routines — subcritical ‘autopilot’ routines and solutions where Gc dominates but Gf creativity wanes. In these periods:

Control modes over-exploit stale models, drifting out of sync with shifting environments.
Meta-gate drift sees χ stay artificially low, so we fail to trigger necessary exploration.

Our own continuous evolution and vitality requires we increase ‘lifespace novelty’ — new roles, cultures, disciplines or physical environments — to jolt uncertainty (χ) upward, re-engaging the creative fluid intelligence branch. By cyclically stressing our schemas, we keep the g-Loop supercritical: ever-evolving, ever-adaptive, and ever-flowing.

Ritualised Compression in the Norse Warrior Elite

Norse heitstrenging — the ritual swearing of solemn oaths — functioned as a powerful communal compression circuit. In the mead-hall, a warrior elite raised the bragarfull cup not merely to drink, but to encode and project a shared strategy. Each vow distilled a tapestry of strategic judgements — assessments of rival strengths, alliance networks, terrain advantages and honour codes — into a single, highly memorable pledge that the entire circle could recall and enforce. By publicly committing one’s future deeds — whether to conquer lands, avenge kin or defend a chieftain — warriors forged a collective schema of cause and effect, binding individual confidence (η) and group certainty (low χ) into an intergenerational causal model.

Over time, the sagas and oral recitations preserved these boasts as compressed packets of grand strategy, passing distilled knowledge to descendants who inherited not just heroic legend but a tested causal template for leadership and decision-making If a leader didn’t have a sound causal understanding of the physical and social world he or she inhabited, they would not gain power and prestige and make a name for themselves!

Lagertha, Norse warrior in Netflix’s Vikings

The Danger of Hubris

Yet not all voices in the mead-hall were uncritical. In many Norse and Anglo-Saxon sagas, a cynical observer — often a sharp-tongued warrior, jester, or rival — plays a key epistemic role: interrogating the coherence, plausibility, or honour-worthiness of the boast and warrior’s pride. Far from undermining the ritual, such challenges acted as compression-quality filters, stress-testing the causal scaffolding embedded in the vow. If a boast couldn’t withstand cynical scrutiny, it risked being exposed as hubris rather than strategy — a signal to recalibrate group confidence (η) and uncertainty (χ). These dissenting voices, like beta-burst salience signals in the g-loop, helped ensure that only robust, well-founded schemas were taken forward into collective memory and intergenerational leadership templates.

Implications for ‘High IQ’ Leadership In Our Own Era

Forge Collective Buy-In with Compressed Narratives
Like Viking oaths, modern leaders can distil complex strategic plans into crisp, shareable commitments — mantras or “north stars” that team members can invoke under pressure.
Amplify Self-Efficacy through Public Commitment
Declaring intentions publicly (e.g., in town-hall meetings or project kick-offs) binds both speaker and audience to a shared causal model, boosting confidence (η) and lowering group uncertainty (χ) around the chosen path.
Embed Causal Foresight into Culture
Regular “boasting” ceremonies — retrospectives where teams pledge future goals— anchor organisational learning in a compressed, enforceable schema. These rituals become living archives of strategic insight, easing intergenerational knowledge transfer.
Ritualise Schema Refinement
Just as mead-hall boasts were followed by sagas that tested and retold their outcomes, businesses should ritualise post-mortems and storytelling, pruning failed tactics and reinforcing successful heuristics — mirroring hippocampal replay and schema compression.
Guard Against Prestige-Driven Overconfidence
As in the sagas, leaders with power or prestige may fall prey to overconfidence in compressed schemas simply because those schemas once succeeded. But when confidence (η) becomes inflated by status rather than real-time feedback, and uncertainty (χ) is artificially suppressed by deference or fear, the system can drift into brittle overcommitment — echoing the peril of hubris in heroic boasts. Effective leadership demands humility before complexity: creating space for dissent, updating priors, and recognising when authority blinds rather than clarifies.
Balance Compression with Creative Decompression
Finally, heed the Viking flip-side: periodic challenges to your compressed schemas— “what the f**k?” moments — are essential to avoid subcritical stagnation. Structured retreats, role rotations or innovation sprints can raise χ, loosening existing scripts and seeding fresh hypotheses for the next “boast” cycle - perhaps a genuinely creative one next time round.

By adopting these ritualised ‘compression circuits,’ modern organisations can harness the dual power of efficiency and innovation, stability and evolution — just as the Norse warrior elite did with their heitstrenging in that good mead-hall energy.

And here is a solid Viking boast for confident entrepreneurs….

Comments or Insights?

Please share any personal experiences, thoughts or reflections that resonate with this framework in the comments below. Let’s build our intelligence and evolve together!