How do you become less wrong?

That was the question under this entire conversation with Adam Karaoguz, writer of Renaissance Humans and architect of what he calls the A-Frame: a model built around attention, appreciation, action, and attunement.

At first glance, it sounds like a cousin to Boyd’s OODA loop. And in some ways, it is. Adam is clearly working in that orbit. But he is also trying to do something different; he is trying to describe not just how humans prevail in adversarial systems, but how they relate to reality itself. That means he is reaching beyond competition and into cooperation, morality, spirituality, and what it means to live in right relationship with the world.

That is ambitious, and it is also exactly why this conversation was worth having.

What This Episode Explores

We talk about Adam’s A-Frame and the deeper pattern he believes sits underneath both story structure and OODA:

* Attention: what you notice, and what gets filtered out

* Appreciation: discernment, valuation, and sense-making

* Action: what you actually do in response

* Attunement: the ongoing effort to come into better alignment with reality

That last part is where the conversation gets interesting.

Because “attunement” is not just another word for awareness. Adam is trying to smuggle in something more. He is reaching for the moral and spiritual layer. The question of value. The reality that human beings are not just processing machines trying to optimize outcomes, but meaning-seeking creatures trying, however imperfectly, to live in accordance with something bigger than themselves.

That is a real move, and it deserves pressure.

Where I Pushed

Any framework that claims to help people navigate reality better has to answer hard questions:

* Can it be used by bad actors?

* Does it make a person morally better, or just more effective?

* Can a group actually become attuned, or does it inevitably drift toward narrative capture?

Those are structural questions, and to Adam’s credit, he did not try to bluff his way through them. In several places, he simply said: I don’t know yet.

That is a big deal and worthy of serious respect.

A lot of people build grand frameworks and then protect them like fragile idols. Adam was willing to think out loud, leave parts unresolved, and let the tension stay visible. That made the conversation better.

Underneath all the language of attunement, resonance, signal, flow, and tuning, I think Adam is trying to solve a real modern problem:

How do you keep your attention from being hijacked long enough to form a relationship with reality that is not mediated entirely by propaganda, algorithms, outrage, and ego?

We live in an environment engineered to fragment attention and distort perception. So when Adam talks about the need for a calmer internal operating system, better digital hygiene, and more deliberate sense-making, he is identifying a crucial part of the fight.

But I also think our conversation exposed a limit, because becoming more capable at navigating reality is not automatically the same thing as becoming good.

A manipulative person can be highly perceptive. A predator can be disciplined.An immoral person can become very effective inside their own value system.

So the real question is whether a framework places you in the right relationship with truth, morality, and responsibility. And that is where the spiritual and ethical dimension becomes unavoidable.

In This Episode

We discuss:

* Adam’s A-Frame: attention, appreciation, action, attunement

* Why he felt OODA was missing something

* Why attention is not neutral

* The relationship between story structure and reality navigation

* The spiritual and moral layer of human decision-making

* Whether attunement can be weaponized

* Whether groups can become attuned without collapsing into narrative protection

* Why “becoming less wrong” may be a better goal than certainty

* Personal operating systems, digital hygiene, and building better discernment

This was a pretty fascinating conversation that didn’t tie everything up in a neat package of answers. We dive, we push and test, we think out loud and ramble a bit, and we come up with more questions.

As we should.

Visit Adam Karaoguz at his Substack, Renaissance Humans, or at his website, AdamKaraoguz.com.

Get full access to The Shepard Scale at shepardscale.substack.com/subscribe

Change the Game Podcast S1 E9: Attunement, Reality, and the Problem of Becoming Less Wrong

Change the Game Podcast