[DSRP Evidence](https://dsrpevidence.org/)

# The structure of thought and reality

empirical evidence for the three universal laws linking mind, matter, and meaning

Cabrera D, Cabrera L, Journal of Systems Thinking, 2025

## Abstract

A controlled test of whether understanding depends multiplicatively on information and its organization. Nine domain×architecture combinations were run: breast cancer data, handwritten digits and film reviews, each through a decision tree, a logistic regression and a neural network. Information was varied by feature count and organization by an architecture-specific structural-complexity parameter, normalized to [0,1]. The success criterion was fixed before results were known and is external to the instrument: the patient either had cancer or did not.

## What they found (results)

A significant I×O interaction in every domain (p < .001). The product-only model reached a mean adjusted R² of ≈ .72 against ≈ .75 for the full additive-plus-interaction model, using roughly a third of the parameters. Performance collapsed to chance whenever either term approached zero.

## Response

The primary empirical test of 𝕄 = I·O. The case for the multiplicative form rests on parsimony under AIC and BIC, not on out-fitting the additive model, which fits marginally better. These are computational systems rather than human subjects.

[Read the paper](https://doi.org/10.54120/jost.v25i1.dc6smio6)