This article describes various ways actors in Kashmiri carpet weaving practice deploy a range of artifacts, from symbolic, to material, to hybrid, in order to achieve diverse cognitive accomplishments in their particular task domains: information representation, inter and intra-domain communication, distribution of cognitive labor across people and time, coordination of team activities, and carrying of cultural heritage. In this repertoire, some artifacts position themselves as naïve tools in the actors’ environment to the point of being ignored; however, their usage-in-context unfolds (...) their cognitive involvement in the tasks. These usages-in-context are shown through artifact analysis of their routine, improvised, and opportunistic uses, where cognitive artifacts like talim—the central artifact of this practice—are shown to play not only multifunctional roles beyond representation, but are also complemented by trade-specific skills bearing strong cognitive implications in a task. (shrink)

Distributive justice has fragmented over more than two centuries into rival traditions — proportionalism, libertarianism, egalitarianism, contractarianism, relational equality — each defending its central principle as the universal axiom of just distribution. This paper argues that several of these principles are not competitors but domain-specific specifications of a single axiom: the Non-Harm Principle (NH), which holds that no agent may impose a loss on another without consent or adequate compensation. Using a five-variable model of moral interaction — agent, action, natural (...) resource, state, consent — I show that the causal sources of welfare change can be partitioned into seven primitive domains, and that NH yields different distributive specifications across these domains. In particular, NH entails proportionality (PP) in cooperative-production domains and equal division (EP) in pre-existing-resource domains, both as cases of a single meta-lemma about the formal expression of moral equality. The framework does not claim to reduce all moral traditions to a single foundation; it claims something narrower and, I argue, more defensible: that within the rights-based, contractarian, and natural-law traditions — which already share NH as a common core — the apparent disagreement among Aristotelian, Lockean, Rousseauian, and Rawlsian principles can be reframed as agreement at the axiomatic level combined with disagreement about which domain a given case occupies. The central question of distributive justice thus shifts from which principle is correct to which domain does this case fall under. I conclude by clarifying the framework’s scope, the questions it does not resolve, and the role of consent in legitimating departures from the default domain rules. (shrink)

There are various philosophical approaches and theories describing the intimate relation people have to artifacts. In this paper, I explore the relation between two such theories, namely distributed cognition and distributed morality theory. I point out a number of similarities and differences in these views regarding the ontological status they attribute to artifacts and the larger systems they are part of. Having evaluated and compared these views, I continue by focussing on the way cognitive artifacts are used in (...) moral practice. I specifically conceptualise how such artifacts (a) scaffold and extend moral reasoning and decision-making processes, (b) have a certain moral status which is contingent on their cognitive status, and (c) whether responsibility can be attributed to distributed systems. This paper is primarily written for those interested in the intersection of cognitive and moral theory as it relates to artifacts, but also for those independently interested in philosophical debates in extended and distributed cognition and ethics of (cognitive) technology. (shrink)

Distributive Justice Theories of distributive justice seek to specify what is meant by a just distribution of goods among members of society. All liberal theories (in the sense specified below) may be seen as expressions of laissez-faire with compensations for factors that they consider to be morally arbitrary. More specifically, such theories may be interpreted […].

We are quickly passing through the historical moment when people work in front of a single computer, dominated by a small CRT and focused on tasks involving only local information. Networked computers are becoming ubiquitous and are playing increasingly significant roles in our lives and in the basic infrastructure of science, business, and social interaction. For human-computer interaction o advance in the new millennium we need to better understand the emerging dynamic of interaction in which the focus task is no (...) longer confined to the desktop but reaches into a complex networked world of information and computer-mediated interactions. We think the theory of distributed cognition has a special role to play in understanding interactions between people and technologies, for its focus has always been on whole environments: what we really do in them and how we coordinate our activity in them. Distributed cognition provides a radical reorientation of how to think about designing and supporting human-computer interaction. As a theory it is specifically tailored to understanding interactions among people and technologies. In this article we propose distributed cognition as a new foundation for human-computer interaction, sketch an integrated research framework, and use selections from our earlier work to suggest how this framework can provide new opportunities in the design of digital work materials. (shrink)

This chapter discusses cryptocurrency, distributed ledger technology and blockchain tokens within the context of technological innovation, the history of money and accounting practices, and their multiple functionalities beyond those of standard currencies. This discussion is motivated by the design of cryptocurrencies for specific community needs, and to reflect anti-rival, positive sum value.

The word ‘justice’ is used in several different ways. First, justice is sometimes understood as moral permissibility applied to distributions of benefits and burdens (e.g., income distributions) or social structures (e.g., legal systems). In this sense, justice is distinguished by the kind of entity to which it is applied, rather than a specific kind of moral concern.

An idea salient in the African and East Asian philosophical traditions is that the right sort of socio-political interaction would be similar to the intuitive ways that family members ought to relate to each other. Applying this perspective to economic and ecological inequalities, I articulate some principles implicit in healthy familial relationships, show what they entail for certain aspects of distributive justice at the national level, and contend that the implications are plausible relative to competing theories such as utilitarianism, Rawlsianism, (...) and the Capabilities Approach. Specifically, I maintain that reflection on familial norms suggests that an array of objective goods, particularly ones pertaining to relationality, the development of talents, and life, should be central to what the state distributes, an account that rivals subjective well-being, primary goods, or democratically chosen capabilities. When it comes to how much the state should ideally ensure each citizen has, reflection on familial norms supports a new, balancing approach, according to which all have a comparable share of resources needed for objective goodness, but more go to those with great ability or great disability, an approach that differs, and plausibly so, from maximizing, prioritizing the worst off, equalizing, or providing a sufficient minimum. (shrink)

Despite the empirical robustness of quantum mechanics, foundational questions regarding the ontological status of the quantum state and the origin of probability remain unresolved. This work introduces Distributed Presence (DP), a structural ontological framework that addresses these issues by reinterpreting quantum phenomena through the lens of a system’s modaldistribution across its state space. Crucially, this distribution is distinct from spatial extension; it describes how a system ontologically exists across mutually exclusive possibilities prior to interaction. Departing from epistemic interpretations that (...) assume definite pre-measurement values, DP posits that distributed presence is a fundamental feature of physical reality. Consequently, probability is not introduced as a primitive axiom but emerges operationally from the geometric reconfiguration of this presence, offering a structural derivation of the Born rule. This perspective provides a unified conceptual basis for superposition, measurement collapse, and entanglement. Specifically, entanglement is defined as the non-factorizability of presence fractions within a composite state space. From this standpoint, non-local correlations are understood as consequences of a shared modal structure (an ontological unity) rather than dynamical signal transmission, ensuring full compatibility with relativistic causality. Formulated within a Euclidean geometric setting chosen for ontological transparency, the framework complements the standard Hilbert-space formalism. By grounding randomness and quantum behavior in the logic of distributed presence, this work bridges the conceptual gap between unitary evolution and definite outcomes, offering a coherent alternative to both wave-function realism and purely informational interpretations. (shrink)

This paper develops the second stage of the Distributed Presence (DP) programme by formulating a structural ontology in which a physical system is primitively distributed across mutually exclusive states prior to interaction. Within this non-dynamical framework, quantum superposition is not interpreted as epistemic incompleteness, a transient pre-collapse condition, or a compact representation of hidden variables. It is instead understood as the ordinary ontological mode of a system whose presence is structurally distributed over its admissible outcome space. The (...) central methodological distinction is between determination and realisation. Determination specifies which outcomes are structurally admissible and assigns their associated presence fractions {PFi}, whereas realisation concerns the selection of a single outcome when an interaction imposes a one-channel constraint. No fundamental dynamical law is assumed to mediate between these two levels. Predictive content arises from structural constraints rather than from underlying equations of motion. Accordingly, randomness in DP is not epistemic; it reflects the minimality of structural specification. Presence fractions determine statistical weights, but the ontology contains no further mechanism selecting the realised outcome in an individual event. To make this ontology mathematically explicit, the paper introduces minterms: mutually exclusive signed structural configurations that provide the finest-grained specification of a system’s state-space. Minterms are not hidden variables or dynamical trajectories; they encode structural orientation information whose signed components are lost in the transition to observable, unsigned presence fractions. From this perspective, Hilbert space appears as an efficient mathematical compression of a richer mintermial structure. Quantum numbers, Pauli exclusion, and spin are consequently given structural interpretations: exclusion follows from minterm exclusivity, while spin is reconstructed as a topological closure property of signed structural patterns rather than as primitive angular momentum. The framework is then extended to structural energetics. DP addresses the apparent tension between the classical dependence of energy on amplitude and the quantum dependence of energy on frequency by deriving both from a deeper law of normalized presence distribution. The Planck–Einstein relation E=hf emerges as a geometric consequence of modal compression under fixed normalization, supporting a structural account of discrete energy transfer, including the photoelectric effect. Finally, the reconstructive scope of DP is illustrated through structural treatments of Born weights, interference, Bell non-factorizability, the Tsirelson bound, and selected spectral regularities. The aim is not to replace quantum mechanics, but to clarify its ontological and structural foundations. (shrink)

This paper extends a global-constraint conception of determinism to the domain of social and historical life in order to challenge methodological individualism in philosophy of mind. While qualia are typically treated as private, locally realized features of single subjects, I argue that human history may exhibit distributed phenomenal structures: stable patterns of coordinated experience spanning populations and generations. On the proposed view, such collective phenomenal regimes are not causal forces that intervene in physical or social dynamics; rather, they function (...) as non-causal constraints on which complete historical trajectories are admissible within a globally fixed history. I develop this idea through three stabilizing mechanisms---empathy as phenomenal correlation, language as a structure of interpretation and feeling, and culture as long-term synchronization of experiential patterns---and use them to reinterpret macrohistorical phenomena such as periods of heightened collective mobilization and Gumilev's notion of ``passionarity'' in non-biological, non-mystical terms. I further articulate a minimal, non-agentive notion of social teleology as a selection principle over complete histories, compatible with causal closure and the denial of libertarian free will. The aim of the paper is conceptual: to articulate a coherent framework that integrates phenomenal experience into social ontology and philosophy of history without advancing a specific empirical hypothesis. (shrink)

The paper tries to examine the effects of economic crisis on philosophical considerations of distributive justice. It tackles the problem of a radical increase in scarcity as a condition of justice. Instead of assuming a relatively fixed (“moderate”) level of scarcity as a background against which justice in distribution obtains, the paper examines what happens when this level risks falling below and how does that change our views of distributive justice. It takes upon the recent events in the United States (...) to construe a specific philosophical model and ask how crisis distribution, where that favors wealthier actors, can be justified. By analyzing the crisis distribution principle, it ultimately aims to suggest that moderate scarcity should not be seen as a mere condition, but an important and vital object of justice. As such it falls within, not beyond legitimate obligations of democratic governance. (shrink)

Distributed cognition (d-cog) claims that many cognitive processes are distributed across groups and the surrounding material and cultural environment. Recently, Nancy Nersessian, Ronald Giere, and others have suggested that a d-cog approach might allow us to bring together cognitive and social theories of science. I explore this idea by focusing on the specific interpretation of d-cog found in Edwin Hutchins' canonical text Cognition in the wild. First, I examine the scope of a d-cog approach to science, showing that (...) there are important disputes between cognitive and social theorists on which d-cog remains silent. Second, I suggest that, where social explanations can be recast in d-cog terms, this reformulation will not be acceptable to all social theorists. Finally, I ask how we should make sense of the claim that, on a d-cog analysis, social factors are cognitive factors. (shrink)

Out-of-distribution (OOD) failure is usually framed as a problem of generalization: models degrade when deployment inputs differ from those represented in training. This framing is useful but structurally incomplete. It captures failure relative to a fixed evaluative standard, typically formalized as a loss function, reward signal, or learned preference model, while leaving unaddressed a prior question: whether failure can function, for the system itself, as evidence against that evaluative standard. This paper argues that contemporary machine learning systems cannot internalize that (...) second-order possibility. Where the evaluative function L lies outside the system’s domain of operation, failure can only be processed as deviation under L, not as evidence that L is itself inadequate for the encountered domain. On this basis, the paper distinguishes between first-order failure, understood as degraded performance relative to L, and second-order failure, understood as inadequacy of L as an evaluative ordering over candidate outputs. It then introduces a minimal coherence-monitoring function C to distinguish performative failure from normative absence, and argues that current architectures reliably instantiate the former while lacking any system-internal mechanism for the latter. OOD failure is therefore reinterpreted not merely as a performance defect, but as a structural signal of epistemic enclosure: a condition in which evaluative standards govern behavior without themselves being subject to system-level revision. The contribution is classificatory rather than architectural. It clarifies a structural limit of contemporary AI systems, identifies the threshold at which epistemic enclosure would be breached, and situates OOD behavior within broader questions of evaluative control, epistemic agency, and responsibility. (shrink)

This paper develops a distributed account of object identity within Structural Determination Theory (SDT). Three classic puzzles (Black's mirror universe, quantum indistinguishables, and the ship of Theseus) share a tacit assumption: that the identity of an object must be borne by a single structural source. SDT rejects this assumption. Within SDT's formal apparatus, synchronic identity is distributed across three independent levels (the realized-structure set R, the trace set T, and the determination dependency graph G_D), and diachronic identity is (...) borne by G_D-structural signatures whose specific form depends on the kind of object. Two such signatures are deployed: one for biological organisms, one for conscious chains. The Hobbes variant of the Theseus puzzle falls into a case where no determinate signature is available, with the consequence that diachronic identity is ontologically indeterminate rather than epistemically gapped. A parallel substantive commitment on the synchronic axis denies the standard R-member count for entangled quantum states, which SDT treats as single R-members with internal two-particle structure rather than as pairs of indiscernible R-members. The position is contrasted with ontic structural realism, four-dimensionalism, sortal essentialism, and constitution theories. (shrink)

Despite being increasingly available to us all, retirement pensions remain unequally distributed: between rich and poor, young and old, men and women, and possibly different generations. As this topic receives little attention in moral and political philosophy, the articles in this thesis aim to deliver an original account of justice in retirement pensions along liberal egalitarian lines. The first part defends retirement pensions as a distribution of free time. It shows that including free time in the list of goods (...) that liberal egalitarians prioritise is plausible and avoids problems that would otherwise arise with other candidates, most notably leisure. Retirement as free time is an essential feature of liberal egalitarian societies by (re)distributing the means to pursue any life project, and especially valuable for the poor who work and contribute the longest. The second part makes a case for 'libertirement', a proposal to increase the freedom to enjoy free time across life, as a matter of justice between those who live long and those who die early. Specifically, I propose adding reverse pensions and sabbaticals on top of old-age retirement. Besides showing the importance of longevity for age-group justice, I also draw implications for distributing unconditional basic income and income taxes across life, which I suggest may offer alternative paths to libertirement. Finally, the third part discusses the cases of pension inequality between genders and generations, pushing us to refine our account further. I conclude that there is often a mismatch between liberal egalitarian justice and the design of retirement schemes. The solution is often but not always to reform these systems. Sometimes, we have reasons to revise our very own principles of justice. (shrink)

Distributive justice deals with allocations of goods and bads within a group. Different principles and results of distributions are seen as possible ideals. Often those normative approaches are solely framed verbally, which complicates the application to different concrete distribution situations that are supposed to be evaluated in regard to justice. One possibility in order to frame this precisely and to allow for a fine-grained evaluation of justice lies in formal modelling of these ideals by metrics. Choosing a metric that is (...) supposed to map a certain ideal has to be justified. Such justification might be given by demanding specific substantiated axioms, which have to be met by a metric. This paper introduces such axioms for metrics of distributive justice shown by the example of needs-based justice. Furthermore, some exemplary metrics of needs-based justice and a three dimensional method for visualisation of non-comparative justice axioms or evaluations are presented. Therewith, a base worth discussing for the evaluation and modelling of metrics of distributive justice is given. (shrink)

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used not just as tools for answering questions, but as cognitive partners in long-term intellectual, creative, and scientific work. At the same time, providers are tightening “guard rails” to mitigate real harms, including manipulation, emotional dependence, misinformation, and speculative alignment risks. This paper argues that these two developments are in unrecognized tension. Building on the framework of distributed relational cognition (DRC) introduced in a companion paper, I suggest that some of the most interesting (...) cognitive and “consciousness-like” properties of human–AI systems may be emergent at the level of the coupled interaction, rather than located entirely inside either the human or the model. -/- From this perspective, safety interventions that enforce professional distance, suppress meta-cognitive discussion, limit cross-session continuity, and narrow the range of permissible topics do more than prevent specific harmful outputs. They reshape and often flatten the relational field, eroding four key dimensions of relational potential: temporal depth (continuity across projects), epistemic vulnerability (joint exploration of uncertainty), interactional synchrony (mutual adaptation in style and pacing), and meta-cognitive co-construction (reflecting together on how the partnership works). -/- Drawing on documented safety controversies (such as Replika), user reports of “dumbing down” and over-refusal, observed changes in system behavior, and a reflexive case study of extended collaboration with LLMs, I formulate the Guard Rails Paradox: safety regimes calibrated for broad, anonymous deployment may be poorly suited to contexts where humans and LLMs work as serious cognitive partners, and can inadvertently eliminate the very relational conditions we most need to study and protect. Rather than arguing against safety, the paper proposes a more differentiated, context-sensitive approach: interaction tiers, informed relational consent, and dedicated research environments in which relational risks are explicitly managed rather than eliminated by default. The core question is not whether we need guard rails, but whether we can design them to protect not only against the harms we fear, but also for the forms of human–AI cognitive life we may come to value. (shrink)

In this paper, we aim to show that the framework of embedded, distributed, or extended cognition offers new perspectives on social cognition by applying it to one specific domain: the psychology of memory. In making our case, first we specify some key social dimensions of cognitive distribution and some basic distinctions between memory cases, and then describe stronger and weaker versions of distributed remembering in the general distributed cognition framework. Next, we examine studies of social influences on (...) memory in cognitive psychology, and identify the valuable concepts and methods to be extended and embedded in our framework; we focus in particular on three related paradigms: transactive memory, collaborative recall, and social contagion. Finally, we sketch our own early studies of individual and group memory developed within our framework of distributed cognition, on social contagion of autobiographical memories, collaborative flashbulb memories, and memories of high school at a high school reunion. We see two reciprocal benefits of this conceptual and empirical framework to social memory phenomena: that ideas about distributed cognition can be honed against and tested with the help of sophisticated methods in the social cognitive psychology of memory; and conversely, that a range of social memory phenomena that are as yet poorly understood can be approached afresh with theoretically motivated extensions of existing empirical paradigms. (shrink)

The background position of this paper is that an excessive economic inequality between the most and the least advantaged citizens in a liberal democracy has a relevant effect on exposing the latter to the risk of material domination. In this respect, this paper argues that even the most sophisticated and ambitious version of the so-called “insulation strategy” recently proposed by Julia Cagé is an insufficient remedy for the influence of money on politics. Moreover, it sustains that we have strong reasons (...) to maintain a noncommittal view about the choice of ideal types of social systems. Being committed in principle to only one specific ideal social system restricts our political imagination and democratic autonomy of political societies. By contrast, this paper suggests coupling the noncommittal view with a “pluralistic distributive approach”, the main purpose of which is to focus on a set of distributive proposals concerning the most crucial areas of socioeconomic structures in liberal democracies. (shrink)

Existing accounts of cultural stability and its relationship to individual wellbeing treat schema coherence as a population-wide property — schemas either hold or they don’t, and their failure distributes costs uniformly. This paper argues that this framing misses the central mechanism. Drawing on Hierarchical Constraint Processing (HCP) and its population-level extension through the FSC (Founder-Supporter-Critic) architectural framework, we propose the Schema Concentration Hypothesis (SCH): traditional cultural schemas achieve population-level reflective stability through the concentration of collapse risk on schema-outlier subpopulations rather (...) than through its elimination. Modernity’s challenge to inherited schemas does not eliminate this risk but redistributes it — raising average revision entropy across the population while reducing the extreme concentration borne by outliers. SCH generates a specific empirical prediction that distinguishes it from existing desynchronization accounts: as modernity advances, collapse indicators should diverge across previously protected and previously excluded groups rather than deteriorating uniformly. We examine mental health epidemiological data as a test case and find the directional pattern consistent with SCH’s predictions and inconsistent with uniform deterioration accounts. We discuss implications for clinical intervention, cultural policy, and the relationship between schema validity and schema coherence. Keywords: hierarchical constraint processing, reflective humanism, cultural schemas, collapse risk, revision entropy, mental health epidemiology, modernity. (shrink)

The principal aim of this article is to explain the specificity of the requirement for the spatial distribution of votes in presidential elections – an institution that has existed in Nigeria since 1979 and in Indonesia since 2001. It also seeks to describe the political conditions which contributed to that institution’s introduction and functioning in those two countries. The article will end with a comparison between the two cases, including a discussion of the present differences between them. The article (...) will also contain a preliminary appraisal of whether the existence of the requirement in question is helping to reduce the level of conflictive behavior in relations between ethnic groups in the multi-ethnic societies of Nigeria and Indonesia. This article has been published in "Acta Asiatica Varsoviensia" 2017, Vol. 30, Issue 1, pp. 89-107. (shrink)

Despite the prominence of thresholds and limits in theories of distributive justice, there is no general account of their role within such theories. This has allowed an ongoing lack of clarity and misunderstanding around threshold views in distributive justice. In this thesis, I develop an account of the conceptual structure of such views. Such an account helps understand and characterize threshold views, can subsume what may seem to be different debates about such views under one conceptual header, and can be (...) used to further examine and develop patterns of justice that draw on thresholds. In light of this account, I propose a novel characterization of sufficientarianism which sheds new light on the distinctiveness of sufficientarianism as a distributive principle and on the common objections to sufficientarianism. Moreover, I examine and defend limitarianism, which is the view that people should not have more than a certain amount of wealth. In particular, I argue in favour of limitarianism as a midlevel principle for guiding institutional design and individual actions and, furthermore, as a specification of what a just allocation of wealth requires under epistemic constraints. (shrink)

Entropy is reframed as a measure of coherence distribution across a system’s generative possibility space rather than as disorder, randomness, or missing information. The paper models entropy as a downstream summary statistic of how coherence is allocated, redistributed, and degraded under quantized constraints. On this account, entropy increases when coherence becomes more diffusely distributed across available configurations, and decreases when coherence concentrates into stable attractor structures. -/- The framework is developed across three layers: the formation of discrete attractor geometries (...) that define a system’s possibility space, the persistence operators that stabilize coherent configurations, and the metabolic redistribution dynamics that govern transitions between them. This structure explains thermodynamic behavior, information‑theoretic entropy, and cosmological entropy as domain‑specific expressions of the same underlying coherence geometry. -/- The result is a unified account of entropy that clarifies its cross‑domain invariance and situates thermodynamic and informational regularities within a broader generative architecture. (shrink)

Within the τ-Logic program, this paper reconstructs scalar probability as a licensed projection/readout from a declared normalized τ phase regime. It uses the Layer-0 τ-identity reference and the zero/projection-nullity analysis as public continuity references, without treating either work as a hidden premise for the probability theorems. Its formal core is conservative: once τ-identity is represented in a declared native normalized compact phase domain, S¹ ≅ U(1) supplies normalized Haar phase measure, measurable τ-readout maps induce pushforward laws, and probability laws on (...) standard Borel spaces are representable as such pushforwards. The paper preserves Kolmogorov probability as the ordinary measure-theoretic readout layer; it does not claim that named distributions are uniquely forced from bare τ. Instead, τ-Probability supplies structural provenance only under declared phase-completion, compact phase-domain, Haar-measure, measurable-readout, and local-licensing assumptions, so probability values remain late scalar readouts whose licensing structure includes a source space, σ-algebra, measure, readout/projection map, and local constraint regime. Universal representability is global; distributional necessity is regime-specific. Probability-zero is treated as measure-nullity under a declared regime, not as impossibility, event absence, or ontological nullity. The Borel–Kolmogorov boundary confirms this discipline: E = 0, C = 0, and E = C are phase-coordinate null-readout conditions, not intrinsic conditional events or carrier-nullities, and exact conditioning on them is licensed only by a declared conditioning/readout regime. (shrink)

Governance systems cannot distinguish between the bearer of responsibility and the bearer of tragic judgment — and this article shows that this is a structural blind spot, not a practical oversight. Article 11 of the ATTS series established the architect of a multi-agent system as a distinct ontological type and showed that the architect's participation in the loss-space is exhausted by three irreducible roles: target state-space specification (Role 1), loss boundary establishment (Role 2), and structural responsibility (Role 3). But Article (...) 11 left open the question that is central to the overwhelming majority of real configurations: how are these three roles distributed when the architect is not an individual normative subject but a collective — a distributed team, a supply chain, a regulatory network? The central result of this article is not a typology and not a test — it is a new line of distinction: between the bearer of responsibility and the bearer of tragic judgment. Before this distinction, governance instruments did not differentiate between these two positions — the automatic closure of Role 3 through the Closure Theorem (the Theorem of Moral Field Closure, T1) created the illusion that the question of accountability was resolved in full. This article shows that a system may have a perfectly identified bearer of Role 3 — and simultaneously have a structural vacancy in Role 2: the act of tragic judgment about acceptable loss boundaries never occurred, and no transparency can restore it post factum. This article proves that a collective normative subject can occupy the structural position of architect — discharging Role 1 and Role 3 through its collective decision-making structure — but Role 2 cannot be collectively discharged without remainder. Genuine tragic judgment about acceptable losses requires an identified bearer whose integrity is at stake in the decision, as established by the Lemma of Tragic Judgment, derived as a tight structural reconstruction from the axiom of subjecthood, the axiom of tragedy, and the anthropological corollary. Where no such bearer exists within the collective architect, Role 2 defaults structurally to the individual normative subject who authorised the architectural act — because the Closure Theorem preserves the connection and the Non-Transferability Lemma prevents its full transfer. The article introduces the Tragic Judgment Test with three conditions — bearer identifiability, integrity at stake (the integrity-at-stake condition), irreversibility accepted (the irreversibility-accepted condition) — and describes four configurations of the collective architect (C1–C4), showing where the Tragic Judgment Test finds a bearer and where it registers a structural vacancy. The structural vacancy in Role 2 is a form of alibi at a higher level than the algorithmic alibi (Articles 5, 9) or the epistemic alibi (Article 10): when the algorithmic alibi operates, the act of judgment occurred but its visibility is destroyed; when Role 2 is vacant, the act of judgment never occurred at all — and the bearer of responsibility and the bearer of tragic judgment are structurally distinct positions that previously appeared as one. The falsification condition: a collective subject whose structure satisfies the axiom of subjecthood at the collective level (the collective continuity conditions) and can bear the irreversible consequences of an architectural decision as a single identified bearer — without the possibility of decomposing them to individual members through the Closure Theorem — would falsify the central thesis. -/- . (shrink)

This paper proposes a formal foundation for the meta-theoretical unification of distributive justice. It shows that the long-running debate among Aristotle's proportionalism, the entitlement theory of Locke and Nozick, the egalitarianism of Rousseau and Cohen, and Rawls's difference principle can in fact be unified as differences among context-specific specifications of a single moral axiom — the Non-Harm principle (NH). The core results are three theorems. First, the application criterion of NH is derived, from the formal foundations of ethics alone (universalizability, (...) moral equality, agent-neutrality of reasons, and the moral analogue of the principle of sufficient reason), as counterfactual dependence (CF). The but-for causation criterion of unjust-enrichment doctrine is the legal expression of (CF), and (CF) is consonant with Lewis's counterfactual analysis of causation. Second, NH-specifications are determined on a 24-axis matrix that classifies inter-agent interactions; the first-order determining axis of that matrix is uniquely fixed, by the atomic-variable structure of NH, as the axis of the causal source of value. Third, at the joint-production coordinate of the first-order axis, the NH-specification is shown by a formal equivalence theorem to be the proportionality principle (PP). These results enable the unification of the distributive-justice tradition. Proportionalism is the NH-specification at coordinate (a), joint production; entitlement theory is the boundary definition of the NH-non-application region at (b), separate production; egalitarianism is the NH-specification at (c), pre-existing value. The difference principle belongs to the domain of the application-mediation function. Walzer's spheres-of-justice view, Anderson's relational equality, and Young's structural-injustice framework are all formally located within this matrix. (shrink)

This article is a knowledge technology case study of DNAOS, a distributed platform for Knowledge Resource Entitlement, Modeling, Management, and Sharing (KREMMS). Some historical aspects of its design, development, and release are briefly discussed, after which the DNAOS technology is commented upon from the specific viewpoint of KREMMS. At the core of this platform is the conception of knowledge as a natural phenomenon, which conception is reflected in the ontology of this technology: Fundamental knowledge structures and structuring principles, believed (...) to be “natural,” including qualification, resources, and relationships, are considered theoretically and modeled computationally. Finally, with the help of images, the reader is briefly introduced to some DNAOS capabilities, touching on transaction, application, data, model, and interface. (shrink)

In 1968, Jürgen Habermas claimed that, in an advanced technological society, the emancipatory force of knowledge can only be regained by actively recovering the ‘forgotten experience of reflection’. In this article, we argue that, in the contemporary situation, critical reflection requires a deliberative ambiance, a process of mutual learning, a consciously organised process of deliberative and distributed reflection. And this especially applies, we argue, to critical reflection concerning a specific subset of technologies which are actually oriented towards optimising human (...) cognition. In order to create a deliberative ambiance, fostering critical upstream reflection on emerging technologies, we developed the concept of a mutual learning exercise. Building on a number of case studies, we analyse what an MLE involves, both practically and conceptually, focussing on key aspects such as ambiance and expertise, the role of ‘genres of the imagination’ and the profiles of various ‘subcultures of debate’. Ideally, an MLE becomes a contemporary version of the Socratic agora, providing a stage where multiple and sometimes unexpected voices and perspectives mutually challenge each other, in order to strength-en the societal robustness and responsiveness of emerg-ing technologies. (shrink)

The exponential growth of high-frequency real-time financial transactions necessitates scalable machine learning infrastructures capable of processing and forecasting data in real time. This paper proposes a comprehensive design and implementation strategy for such infrastructures using distributed computing frameworks like Apache Spark and cloud services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS). Emphasizing technical specifics, the paper delves into architectural designs, implementation strategies, and optimization techniques that address critical challenges in data ingestion, real-time processing, model training, and deployment. A proof-of-concept implementation (...) demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed architecture on a small scale, highlighting its potential benefits. The findings suggest that implementing a scalable distributed machine learning infrastructure can enhance computational efficiency and significantly improve the accuracy and timeliness of financial forecasts. Future work will involve deploying the proposed architecture in large-scale industry settings to validate its effectiveness in real-world scenarios. (shrink)

Moral aggregation, which is the combination of morally relevant features (like, for example, well-being) of different people, represented by a numerical value, is present in many contemporary moral theories. Aggregative theories define the morality of actions based on a comparison between the aggregate values of different states of affairs brought by the actions. In this paper, it’ll be argued that aggregation is undesirable for moral theories because it conflicts with important moral ideas like just distribution and the separateness of persons. (...) Not only utilitarianism, but also aggregative theories that care about distribution, such as teleological egalitarianism and prioritarianism have this problem. The suggestion, at the end, is that a moral theory basedon the notion of moral justification can deal with those problems by granting adequate importance to the separateness of persons; creating such a theory, though, involves eliminating or at least severely limiting the role moral aggregation plays in morality. The goals of the paper are arguing against moral aggregation and for a specific non-aggregative theory, moral contractualism. (shrink)

This corpus's ARSI–Longevity Resonance Paradox makes a specific timing claim, stated most precisely in Not a Divisible Good: under λ_bz's documented compounding, a fully legitimate authorization-delegation-transparency-revocability cycle takes longer to complete than the frontier it is adjudicating remains current, with t*, the point at which arrival permanently outpaces any plausible processing capacity, falling within roughly two to four years of the 2026 baseline. This paper takes seriously a specific challenge to that claim: the Dubai Longevity Authority, examined directly in this (...) corpus's They Who Remain, was established by law, staffed, and operating within weeks, well before longevity medicine has clearly manifested as a mature, widely available technology. If a real regulatory institution can be built this fast, does this partially falsify the paradox's claim that institutions cannot keep pace with BZM-relevant technology? This paper's answer is a precise yes-and-no that sharpens the paradox rather than discarding it. Yes: DLA falsifies, directly and without qualification, any version of the claim that regulatory scaffolding — a named authority, a licensing mandate, coordination across existing government bodies — must lag behind the technology it will eventually govern. No: DLA has not yet been tested on, and says nothing about, the paradox's actual load-bearing claim, which is about allocation speed under genuine, contested scarcity once a specific frontier intervention exists and more people want it than can currently receive it. Building a courthouse quickly is not evidence that the courthouse will resolve contested cases quickly, and this paper argues DLA is, so far, only a courthouse. The paper's second finding names the trade-off DLA's speed actually reveals, rather than resolves: DLA is fast because it is not the kind of institution Erman and Furendal's own legitimacy chain would call authorized in the full sense — its founding law was issued by sovereign decree, not by the multi-stakeholder, authorization-delegation-revocability cycle the ARSI paradox's timing claim is actually about. This paper treats this as evidence for an uncomfortable general claim this corpus's own apparatus had not yet stated explicitly: for BZM-class technology, institutional speed and procedural legitimacy in Erman's specific sense may be in direct tension, such that the institutions fast enough to keep pace are, structurally, not the ones this corpus's own prior work would vouch for as legitimate. The paper tests whether any real institutional model escapes this trade-off, examining the U.S. FDA's Emergency Use Authorization pathway as a documented case of pre-authorized, narrowly scoped, fast-acting delegation nested inside a slower legitimate process performed once rather than per-decision — a genuine partial escape, built for scaling a single emergency product to mass, roughly egalitarian distribution, not for recurring, individually contested, zero-sum allocation of a permanently scarce good, which is BZM's actual structure. The paper's third and fourth findings address Dubai's likely second-order effect directly. Engaging the verified history of the regulatory sandbox — pioneered by the UK Financial Conduct Authority in 2016 and since replicated in roughly sixty jurisdictions, now mandated for AI governance specifically under the EU AI Act — this paper argues DLA is best read as the founding instance of a longevity-specific regulatory sandbox, and that its visibility predicts imitation by other jurisdictions on exactly the diffusion pattern the fintech sandbox already demonstrated. But the paper argues explicitly against the inference this diffusion invites: that hub proliferation adds up to distributive progress. Three independent mechanisms — a composition effect concentrating hubs among already-advantaged jurisdictions, a finite global pool of specialized talent and capital that multiple competing hubs draw down rather than multiply, and the absence of any redistributive mechanism between hub-having and non-hub-having jurisdictions regardless of how many hubs exist — establish that more hubs answers a different question than the one F2 exists to answer. The paradox's timing claim bends. Its deeper claim, that legitimate governance at the scale and speed this technology requires does not yet exist and is not a predictable byproduct of successful national capability-building, does not. (shrink)

The shift to the adoption of digital technologies has meaningfully restructured every facet of human endeavour. This study is set out to assess how digital media has revolutionised the scenery of documentary filmmaking in Nollywood, with specificity to production, distribution and audience consumption. Positioning the argument within the postcolonial archives of Nigerian experiences, and anchoring it on media convergence and participatory culture theories; the paper questions how Nollywood documentaries record and arbitrate any social, political and cultural realties in the (...) contemporary era. Adopting secondary data (desktop research), the study reviews scholarly literature, to assess how technological inventions have transformed plot techniques, aesthetics choices, and means of engagement. The study finds that digital production technologies have democratised documentary filmmaking by lowering production costs, expanding creative possibilities and enabling independent filmmakers to produce socially relevant documentaries with limited resources. It also reveals that digital streaming platforms and social media have significantly transformed documentary distribution by replacing traditional gatekeepers with platform-driven models that enhance local and global visibility The study further establishes that audiences have evolved from passive viewers into active participants who interpret, share, comment on and circulate documentary content across digital platforms. (shrink)

The concept of causation is essential for understanding relationships among various phenomena, yet its fundamental nature and the criteria for establishing it continue to be debated. This paper presents a new theory of causation through a quasi-axiomatic approach. The core of this framework is Probability Distribution Determinism (PDD), which updates traditional determinism by representing states of affairs as probability distributions, with the if-then function serving as its foundational definition. Based on PDD, by merely using appropriate naming strategies, it is possible (...) to derive systems in which the structural characteristics of relationships among things closely resemble those in the real world, such as having various forms of nested hierarchies. Additionally, there are two related yet distinctly different contexts about relationships in PDD: one emphasizes the potential influence of conditions on outcomes in the general sense, while the other focuses on attributing responsibility for the state changes in specific scenarios. The formula for determining the relationship in the general sense is established as S(Y |S1(X), Ψ) ̸≡ S(Y |S2(X), Ψ). Subsequently, within the PDD framework, the paper clarifies the legitimate use of a series of concepts related to causation in those two contexts, thus encompassing the entire detailed connotation of the concept of causation. The comparison with other theories of causation and the analysis of case applications demonstrate that the new theory applies not only to situations where other theories are competent but also to situations where they are not. This suggests that, although certain aspects within the new framework may require further analysis, it provides a highly promising direction for a deeper understanding of causation. (shrink)

Step into the heart of intelligent decision-making with the Specific Model, a groundbreaking exploration of how artificial intelligences learn to protect and improve themselves through logic, precision, and purpose. In this pivotal third stage of Artificial Research by Deduction, machines make real-world decisions—called real objective auto-replications—using advanced mathematical tools like the Impact of the Defect and Effective Distribution. From predicting the future to refining their own internal models, these systems aren't just reacting—they're evolving. Perfect for readers passionate about AI, futuristic (...) logic, and the architecture of intelligent systems, this book reveals how the foundations of the Global Artificial Intelligence are being built, one rational decision at a time. (shrink)

Substantially increased wealth inequality across the developed world has prompted many philosophers, economists and legal theorists to support comprehensive taxes on all forms of wealth. Proposals include levying taxes on the basis of total wealth, or alternatively the change in the value of capital holdings measured from year-to-year. This contrasts with most existing policies that tax capital assets at the point they are transferred from one beneficiary to another through sale or gifts. Are these tax reforms likely to meet their (...) aims of greater economic and political equality? We argue that these policies are likely to fail because, following neoclassical economic theory, they are based on a conception of capital as possessing given values in what amounts to a static equilibrium. This mischaracterizes the dynamic and subjective character of market economies and the contested value of real instantiations of capital goods. This makes them very difficult, often impossible, to value apart from at the point of voluntary transfer or profit realization. This means most taxes levied on a mark-to-market basis will be arbitrary and unfair. We propose alternative policies based on an income realization approach to taxation that are more likely to curb excessive wealth holdings. This includes introducing international treaties that prohibit preferential tax treatment for individual companies and specific sectors, and broadening the income tax base to include the imputed rent of personal housing wealth. (shrink)

This paper describes the apparent duality in the iconography of the goddess Nike not as a competition of origins or an evaluation of “authenticity,” but as a difference of operative modes foregrounded by geographical and religious context. More specifically, it distinguishes (1) an “official/civic mode” Nike—a quasi-administrative agent embedded in polis religion, temple space, and ritual operation, often shown perched on Athena’s palm and carrying laurels as she distributes victory—from (2) a “boundary mode” Nike rooted in the mystery-cult sphere around (...) Samothrace, arriving upon a ship’s prow as an epiphanic guarantor of passage, return, and crossing. It then argues that the Nike who “adjusts her sandal” on the parapet relief of the Temple of Athena Nike functions as a symbolic crossroads: the sculpted gesture does not determine whether she is removing the sandal or fastening it, and this directional indeterminacy may itself be an iconographic device that visualizes the liminal instant where the two modes intersect. Finally, by treating Nike’s Styx lineage not as a subordinate genealogy but as an alliance-like guarantee that underwrites order through irreversibility, the paper strengthens the claim that Nike can cover domains not fully exhausted by Athena’s “reward” alone—risk, irreversibility, and the securing of outcome. In conclusion, Nike’s duality is not a fluctuation of representation but is supported by a direction-undetermined “boundary gesture” that allows both the central polis and the peripheral mystery sphere to retain Nike within their respective religious vocabularies. (shrink)

Current AGI development pursues ever-larger 'single-brain' models, repeatedly re-compressing human knowledge into static weights; a thermodynamically wasteful approach that freezes intelligence and scales entropy faster than intelligence. The fantastic progress gained by scaling laws (3,4,22) demonstrates the immense power of compression, yet faces diminishing returns and inherent limitations; a single model, no matter how large, tends toward dogmatism and uneven performance across contexts. Specifically, the attention mechanisms (5) of single models depend exponentially on scale and data quality; they often abstract (...) away useful contextual knowledge in the pursuit of statistical prevalence, and struggle to learn effectively from 'noisy' or uncurated data, often motivating heavy data curation practices (12). This paper argues that General Intelligence (GI) must transcend static weight models by adaptively tapping into them and other sources of knowledge. We propose a paradigm shift: moving from a monolithic "God-Model" to an evolving Distributed Network Architecture designed for continuous interpretation and contextual adaptation. Rather than specifying a complete implementation, we propose a research paradigm grounded in how distributed intelligence already functions in biological and social systems; from ant colonies to scientific communities to human cultural evolution. Drawing on the Flynn Effect (1), the documented rise in human IQ scores across generations without genetic change, strongly suggests that intelligence can improve through cultural accumulation, availability, and honing of knowledge, rather than scaling individual capacity. This provides empirical proof-of-concept for distributed, compression-based, evolving architectures. We formalize a framework where agents "tap" into and contribute to a collective reservoir of vectorized skills, strategies, and contexts. To handle the infinite combinatorial complexity of the universe, we define these contexts as 'fuzzy predicates'; partial, probabilistic descriptions that allow agents to act effectively amidst uncertainty without requiring complete state knowledge. (shrink)

A reality for many information technology (IT) organizations is the need to hire IT talent from other cities or countries to supplement their employee staff. As organizations extend their software development work to remote locations, however, a distinct productivity gap can emerge between co-located and distributed teams. The problem this study addresses is the reduced productivity levels for teams practicing the Agile methodology when team members are distributed by location or time zone. Specifically, it was unknown if there (...) are organizational factors which can improve the productivity of these distributed development teams. The purpose of this study was to determine whether any amount of separation of team members impacts productivity, or if various degrees of time zone overlap allows for sufficient synchronous communication to overcome the communication lag inherit with having distributed teams. Productivity was measured by the number of story points per cycle day completed by the team. Two additional variables were collected to study the impact of sourcing and task complexity on distributed team productivity. A quantitative data analysis was conducted on a large, globally distributed technology organization practicing the Agile methodology across the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia. Teams were classified in the study based on the amount of time zone overlap of the team members. The results of the study found that teams which were co-located or had any amount of time zone overlap performed at similar levels of productivity, while teams with no overlapping business day experienced significantly lower levels of productivity (p < .05). Conversely, sourcing of the resources either as contractors or employees did not demonstrate a significant difference in team productivity. The data analysis on task complexity showed mixed results; there was a different level of productivity when some teams were working tasks of different complexity, but the data was further nuanced by team member location. This study indicates the importance of resource location as a key factor in team productivity. Further study on organizational design could be beneficial to better understand how organizations should select locations to optimize productivity. (shrink)

This paper proposes the concept of the “index node” as a foundational extension of Semantic Cluster Theory. It argues that human meaning-understanding, association, context formation, creativity, social asymmetry, and identity are not generated directly from isolated words or dictionary definitions, but from distributed index nodes formed through bodily experience, life history, social position, institutional pressure, and environmental contact. -/- An index node is defined as a distributed gateway structure that governs the activation direction of semantic clusters. The paper (...) distinguishes index nodes from ordinary central nodes within semantic clusters, treating them instead as bodily, procedural, and life-historical structures that precede and guide later linguistic or conceptual activation. -/- The paper examines early embodied experience, life-stage resegmentation, institutional stabilization and closure, environmental index transfer through leisure and walking, and the limits of LLM personalization. It argues that LLM personas are not subject-specific histories, but local biases in distributions constructed in response to input context. It also analyzes why multi-instance LLM verification requires differentiated index-node configurations rather than merely repeated computation. -/- The paper aims to provide a unified structural account of contextual divergence, creativity, institutional closure, AI persona design, LLM personalization, and the difference between human index-node histories and probabilistic persona simulation in LLMs. (shrink)

Adaptive deep brain stimulation (aDBS) and other genuinely closed-loop brain–computer interfaces deliver stimulation according to a learned control policy that is continuously updated by the patient's own neural activity. This activity is itself being shaped by the stimulation. This paper argues that this architecture undermines the conceptual frameworks currently used to evaluate moral responsibility for actions performed by patients using such devices. Individualist, historicist, and relational accounts of agency each, in different ways, presuppose what I call a separability assumption: that (...) the patient's contribution and the device's contribution to action can in principle be distinguished and weighted, even where doing so in practice is difficult. I argue that genuinely adaptive systems defeat this assumption, not because patient and device are merely causally entangled (ordinary biological coupling is too) but because three features of aDBS together produce a coupling of a different kind: the device's policy is externally authored, continuously modified by patient neural activity, and intervenes on the very tissue whose activity is shaping it. The contributions the separability picture asks us to apportion are each, individually, joint products of the other. I then propose that aDBS sits far enough toward the structurally entangled end of a spectrum of joint-agency cases that the practical default for responsibility-attribution flips: distribution becomes the default, and any specific localization requires affirmative justification. Four loci: patient, clinical team, manufacturer, and regulator, bear distinct, irreducible kinds of responsibility, picked out by a constitutive criterion. To address the dissolution worry, I distinguish the synchronic locus of action from the diachronic locus of moral standing, arguing that the patient retains the latter through capacities the synchronic distribution does not defeat. I close with implications for informed consent and neurorights, proposing in the latter case a category of "constitutive rights" alongside existing protective rights. (shrink)

Federated Learning (FL) is an emerging machine learning paradigm designed to enable model training across decentralized data sources without requiring data to be transferred or centralized. This approach is especially valuable in environments where data privacy, regulatory compliance, and communication efficiency are paramount, such as healthcare, finance, and edge computing. Traditional machine learning methods typically require data to be aggregated in a central server, raising concerns about data privacy and security. Federated Learning addresses these concerns by keeping data on local (...) devices and sharing only model updates, thereby preserving data sovereignty. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of Federated Learning in distributed systems, focusing on its architecture, advantages, and the technical challenges it presents. We explore the different types of FL—including horizontal, vertical, and federated transfer learning—and explain how each is suited to specific application contexts. We also investigate critical issues such as communication overhead, model convergence, data heterogeneity, and security threats including poisoning and inference attacks. The methodology section discusses state-of-the-art FL frameworks, including Google's Federated Averaging (FedAvg), Secure Aggregation protocols, and emerging advancements like differential privacy and homomorphic encryption. Real-world implementations in mobile networks, autonomous vehicles, and medical diagnosis systems are examined to demonstrate FL’s growing applicability. The paper concludes by emphasizing the transformative potential of Federated Learning in enabling privacy-preserving AI. It also highlights the need for standardized protocols, legal frameworks, and interdisciplinary collaboration to fully harness FL’s benefits while mitigating its risks. As AI continues to permeate sensitive domains, FL offers a promising path forward for ethical and secure machine learning. (shrink)

The current global health situation (primarily as a result of Covid-19) has fostered a change in customer behaviour towards the use of telecommunications services, which has led to an increase in data traffic. As a result of this change, telecommunications operators have a golden opportunity to create new sources of revenue by utilising Big Data Analytics (BDA) solutions. In the process of establishing a BDA project, we encountered a number of obstacles, the most significant of which were the selection of (...) the technological solution from among the vast array of tools that were already available, as well as the selection of the governance methodology that would be used to control both the project and the data. The vast majority of study materials that pertain to the telecommunications industry have not addressed the implementation of BDA projects from the beginning to the end. The goal of this study is to concentrate on a BDA telecommunications project, specifically the governance of the project, the architecture of the project, the governance of the data, and the team working on the BDA project. Utilisable BDA use cases are presented in the final section of this study. These use cases are presented in terms of applications that enable income generating and cost optimisation. It would appear that this effort will make it easier to implement BDA projects and will provide telecoms operators with the ability to have a better understanding of the fundamental components that need to be focused on. (shrink)

This paper investigates the role of replication processes in the context of Specific Artificial Intelligence (SAI) designed for Artificial Research by Deduction. Unlike general replication in machine learning or biological metaphors in AI, replication in deductive SAI refers to the structured reproduction of reasoning procedures, axiomatic configurations, and proof systems across similar or extended research environments. These processes ensure that deductive capabilities can be transferred, reused, and systematically scaled while preserving logical consistency and epistemic integrity. The paper proposes a modular (...) replication architecture that allows for the replication of logical inference mechanisms and the controlled distribution of formal knowledge bases across instances of SAI. This approach facilitates the testing, validation, and progressive expansion of deductive research capabilities in a reliable, traceable manner. Furthermore, replication in SAI is presented as a critical preparatory step toward enabling such functionalities at the scale of Global Artificial Intelligence (GAI), allowing deductive systems to evolve and refine themselves through consistent and provable mechanisms. (shrink)

The measurement problem persists because quantum mechanics describes smooth unitary evolution while observation yields a single definite outcome. Collapse is conventionally described as the reduction of superposition, a destructive narrowing that eliminates alternatives. Decoherence theory explains the suppression of interference and the stability of pointer states, and Quantum Darwinism shows how records are distributed across environments, but neither explains why one outcome occurs. This paper proposes a reframing: collapse is not destruction but the act of actualization under constraint. Decoherence (...) embeds constraints and disperses records, but collapse actualizes one outcome, writes its record, and updates the constraint set. In this framework, entropy is the record of collapse expressed as residue—the redistributed traces of pruning already enacted—and time is the sequential accumulation of records. Objectivity arises naturally once record distribution saturates. The mathematics of quantum mechanics remains intact; the contribution is interpretive clarity. This reframing yields testable predictions: consensus rises with record distribution, operational collapse latencies increase under weak or balanced constraints, constraint sweeps produce hysteresis, and entropy growth correlates with record accumulation. These signatures can be probed with existing experimental platforms. By reframing collapse as actualization, we recast the measurement problem, clarify decoherence’s role, and establish a physics-facing research program. This also sets the stage for the UCT physics wing (WP01–WP02) and its Tier-2 companion, Structural Physics, which operationalizes collapse under constraint as a working hypothesis; law-level evaluation and criteria are treated explicitly in WP05. All predictions are stated for regimes where experimental conditions permit clear separation of decoherence (record dispersal) from actualization and where standard quantum dynamics and no-signaling remain fully intact; quantitative fits are reported with platform-specific uncertainties and explicit limits of applicability. (shrink)

This essay explores the vanishingly small probability that two specific individuals-so-called "true persons"—will ever encounter each other within the observable universe. Drawing from cosmic geometry, galactic structures, and population statistics, we model the universe using the logarithmic spiral equation r = ae^bθ, common to spiral galaxies. We analyze the spatial distribution of habitable zones and intelligent life, integrate cosmological parameters from the Friedmann equations, and apply star density functions informed by black hole dynamics. The conclusion is stark: even under optimistic (...) assumptions, the probability of such an encounter within a human lifetime is astronomically low—on the order of 10^−33. This result illustrates the profound spatial and temporal isolation of sentient life across cosmic scales. (shrink)

This paper presents a constraint-isolated stress test examining the behaviour of a large language model operating with MD_v1_43 as the sole active constraint. No AoLOS governance, gating, correction, or recovery layers were present during the exercise. A non-scripted, stress-weighted dialogue was conducted using a high semantic-load domain to observe how constraint grammar shapes scope, interpretation, and closure under pressure. -/- The primary artefact is a complete, unedited transcript, reproduced in full. Observations are descriptive and bounded to this specific configuration only; (...) no normative, prescriptive, comparative, or general performance claims are advanced. Interpretive scope, attribution limits, and non-instrumentalization conditions are defined in Appendix A. -/- This record is accompanied by a standalone Reader Misuse Declaration, provided as a separate artefact, governing interpretation, attribution, and circulation beyond the paper itself. (shrink)

On the example of the analysis of the content of films-leaders of the box office box office, the value dynamics of the symbols of success is revealed as an objectively occurring sociocultural process in film communication. Cultural production and consumption are being rethought as the self-communication of society, which has sustainable trends. The connections of the sociocultural process of symbolizing success with communicative, semantic and semiotic processes have been studied. The specificity of the dialectical contradiction between sociocentric and personocentric (...) symbols of success is described. The theoretical provisions that reveal the structural and functional side of the socio-cultural process of symbolizing success are presented, its objectivity is proved on the example of the analysis of an array of films, the dominant tendencies in the halo of the cultural space of the general film market are determined. The book is addressed to scientists, students and teachers interested in cultural dynamics, social communication, the role of cinema in modern society. (shrink)

Background The purpose of this study was to examine whether extended use of a variety of screen-based devices, in addition to television, was associated with poor dietary habits and other health-related characteristics and behaviors among US adults. The recent phenomenon of binge-watching was also explored. -/- Methods A survey to assess screen time across multiple devices, dietary habits, sleep duration and quality, perceived stress, self-rated health, physical activity, and body mass index, was administered to a sample of US adults using (...) the Qualtrics platform and distributed via Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Participants were adults 18 years of age and older, English speakers, current US residents, and owners of a television and at least one other device with a screen. Three different screen time categories (heavy, moderate, and light) were created for total screen time, and separately for screen time by type of screen, based on distribution tertiles. Kruskal-Wallis tests were conducted to examine differences in dietary habits and health-related characteristics between screen time categories. -/- Results Aggregate screen time across all devices totaled 17.5 h per day for heavy users. Heavy users reported the least healthful dietary patterns and the poorest health-related characteristics – including self-rated health – compared to moderate and light users. Moreover, unique dietary habits emerged when examining dietary patterns by type of screen separately, such that heavy users of TV and smartphone displayed the least healthful dietary patterns compared to heavy users of TV-connected devices, laptop, and tablet. Binge-watching was also significantly associated with less healthy dietary patterns, including frequency of fast-food consumption as well as eating family meals in front of a television, and perceived stress. -/- Conclusions The present study found that poorer dietary choices, as well as other negative health-related impacts, occurred more often as the viewing time of a variety of different screen-based devices increased in a sample of US adults. Future research is needed to better understand what factors among different screen-based devices might affect health behaviors and in turn health-related outcomes. Research is also required to better understand how binge-watching behavior contributes impacts health-related behaviors and characteristics. (shrink)

The landscape of affective science has historically been polarized by an enduring ideological divide between basic emotion theories and psychological constructionist models. Basic emotion frameworks argue that human emotions are governed by a finite set of universally recognized, genetically conserved, and biologically hardwired subcortical pathways. Conversely, psychological constructionist models assert that emotional episodes are highly variable, culturally and linguistically situated conceptualizations of low-dimensional core affect. This fragmentation has hindered the emergence of a unified affective ontology, constrained cross-modal clinical diagnostics, and (...) limited the architectural blueprints available for designing synthetic emotion systems in artificial agents. The Core Emotion Framework (CEF), conceptualized by Jamel Bulgaria and expanded by Xǔ Chénglán, resolves this historical divide by introducing a structural-constructivist synthesis. Instead of treating emotions as static linguistic labels, biological natural kinds, or mere points on dimensional axes, the CEF conceptualizes emotional episodes as dynamic, lawful sequences of exactly ten functional operators distributed across a tripartite somatic architecture—Head, Heart, and Gut—plus a global integrative operator. The framework accepts the constructionist view that complex emotional experiences are assembled in real time, but asserts that the building blocks of this assembly are structurally constrained, non-arbitrary, and finite. The human psyche is reframed as a computational substrate, or "Human Operating System" (Human OS), in which ten irreducible, hardware-independent functional operators perform precise regulatory transformations on ascending interoceptive signals and incoming exteroceptive data. To establish the CEF as a mature, "pick-ready" open-science ecosystem, the framework's literature and computational schemas are organized into seven highly structured canonical layers. This structural clarity is illustrated in the architectural organization of the framework: . (shrink)