A Public Experiment in Orientation
How does orientation develop under uncertainty?
And what happens when one’s own orientation process itself becomes transparent?
What Is This About?
The orientation reconstructions document an ongoing orientation process.
They are neither essays nor statements nor assessments.
They do not attempt to decide who is right.
Instead, they document as transparently as possible,
- which observations are available at a given point in time,
- which explanatory models emerge from them,
- how the plausibility of those models changes through new observations,
- and what causes orientation to grow – or to be lost again.
The texts are not written retrospectively.
Each reconstruction describes only the state of orientation at the stated point in time.
Later insights are deliberately not incorporated retroactively.
This makes it possible to see how orientation actually develops.
Why Public?
Orientation often emerges through dialogue.
This documentation therefore explicitly understands itself as a public experiment.
The central question is not whether the published models are “correct.”
The actual research question is:
Can a transparent reconstruction of one’s own orientation process improve the orientation of other people?
The answer is currently open.
It also remains open how this form of documentation affects ongoing communication processes.
Since Orientation Reconstruction 004, the reconstruction itself has become part of the observed process.
This expands the experiment.
The original situation is no longer the only thing being observed.
The experiment now also observes whether and how transparent documentation itself affects the orientation of the people involved.
Working Rules
The reconstructions published so far follow five simple rules:
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Observations and reconstructions are kept strictly separate.
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Each entry describes only the state of knowledge at the stated point in time.
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Multiple competing models may coexist.
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Not every new piece of information produces a new entry – only an actual change in the state of orientation does.
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The document examines its own orientation process, not the errors of others.
These rules are themselves part of the experiment and may continue to evolve over time.
Published Reconstructions
| Date | Reconstruction | Brief description |
|---|---|---|
| August 4, 2026 | OR-001 | Beginning of the open log and introduction of the method. |
| August 4, 2026 | OR-002 | First continuation without a fundamental change in the state of orientation. |
| August 5, 2026 | OR-003 | More communication initially leads to more complexity rather than more orientation. |
| August 5, 2026 | OR-004 | The reconstruction itself becomes part of the observed communication process. |
Further entries are created only when new observations actually change the state of orientation.
What These Documents Are Not
These reconstructions are
- not a chronicle,
- not a collection of evidence,
- not statements,
- not assessments,
- and not retrospective historiography.
They document an open orientation process.
For precisely this reason, competing models are deliberately allowed to coexist as long as the available observations do not justify choosing between them.
Feedback
Feedback is expressly welcome.
Not because agreement is expected.
But because every new observation can change orientation.
Particularly helpful are indications of
- overlooked observations,
- alternative explanatory models,
- or connections that have not yet been considered.
Critical feedback is therefore just as valuable as agreement.
Current State of the Experiment
The reconstructions published so far already reveal an interesting development.
They began with the reconstruction of a specific organizational situation.
Over time, the focus increasingly shifted toward the question of how orientation under uncertainty develops in the first place.
As the reconstructions are shared with participants, the method itself ultimately becomes part of the experiment.
What happens next remains open.