From 2c78dfcca30ffdae251eb58686ae7267c3fa6e0c Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Magnus Hedemark Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2026 22:33:47 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] feat(semantic-spacetime): add format-compliant M1 skill core Add the semantic-spacetime skill skeleton: a thin SKILL.md router with triggers/anti-triggers, Load By Need, Quick Start, Related Skills, gotchas, and exit conditions; a human-facing README; MIT license; deep provenance-marked theory references (foundations, glossary, bibliography); the versioned sst-model-v1 template pair; a 6-case schema-v1 eval manifest; the root README catalog entry; regenerated marketplace and llms artifacts; and the skill-triggers row. Co-authored-by: factory-droid[bot] <138933559+factory-droid[bot]@users.noreply.github.com> --- .claude-plugin/marketplace.json | 9 + .codex-plugin/plugin.json | 1 + README.md | 4 + llms.txt | 1 + references/skill-triggers.md | 1 + semantic-spacetime/LICENSE | 21 + semantic-spacetime/README.md | 41 ++ semantic-spacetime/SKILL.md | 158 ++++++ semantic-spacetime/evals/evals.json | 90 ++++ semantic-spacetime/references/bibliography.md | 251 ++++++++++ semantic-spacetime/references/foundations.md | 449 ++++++++++++++++++ semantic-spacetime/references/glossary.md | 230 +++++++++ .../templates/sst-analysis.md.tmpl | 86 ++++ .../templates/sst-model.yaml.tmpl | 102 ++++ 14 files changed, 1444 insertions(+) create mode 100644 semantic-spacetime/LICENSE create mode 100644 semantic-spacetime/README.md create mode 100644 semantic-spacetime/SKILL.md create mode 100644 semantic-spacetime/evals/evals.json create mode 100644 semantic-spacetime/references/bibliography.md create mode 100644 semantic-spacetime/references/foundations.md create mode 100644 semantic-spacetime/references/glossary.md create mode 100644 semantic-spacetime/templates/sst-analysis.md.tmpl create mode 100644 semantic-spacetime/templates/sst-model.yaml.tmpl diff --git a/.claude-plugin/marketplace.json b/.claude-plugin/marketplace.json index 109283b..1fff3d0 100644 --- a/.claude-plugin/marketplace.json +++ b/.claude-plugin/marketplace.json @@ -1004,6 +1004,15 @@ "strict": false, "description": "Plan authorized security reviews with threat modeling, architecture and dependency audits, and vulnerability classification. Use for scoped defensive security assessment. Do not use for offensive operations, unauthorized testing, or security control implementation." }, + { + "name": "semantic-spacetime", + "source": "./", + "skills": [ + "./semantic-spacetime" + ], + "strict": false, + "description": "Model and diagnose shared semantic ground between agents with Semantic Spacetime (Mark Burgess, 2014-2025): a discrete graph model of meaning over time, where local proper time replaces global clocks, causality is cooperative promises, and gamma(3,4) graphs expose semantic drift, world model divergence, and absorbing states. Use for designing convergent self-healing coordination, modeling intent and trajectories over time, mapping promises onto spacetime, diagnosing semantic drift or dead-ends, and analyzing temporal blindness in agents. Do not use for physics or relativity, pure vector embeddings or RAG without temporal-causal structure, enforceable centralized control, simple single-agent prompting, or tool manuals — route those to the appropriate skill." + }, { "name": "seo-audit", "source": "./", diff --git a/.codex-plugin/plugin.json b/.codex-plugin/plugin.json index c9f8d89..53aaf00 100644 --- a/.codex-plugin/plugin.json +++ b/.codex-plugin/plugin.json @@ -131,6 +131,7 @@ "./restic", "./secure-software-engineering", "./security-audit-methodology", + "./semantic-spacetime", "./seo-audit", "./site-reliability-engineering", "./slack", diff --git a/README.md b/README.md index 0fcebcc..7dfc54d 100644 --- a/README.md +++ b/README.md @@ -459,6 +459,10 @@ Build security into software requirements, design, implementation, review, and r Give authorized teams a disciplined way to identify and prioritize security risks without mistaking a checklist for a security guarantee. +### [semantic-spacetime](semantic-spacetime/SKILL.md) + +Model and diagnose shared semantic ground between agents with Mark Burgess's Semantic Spacetime: discrete graph spacetimes where meaning evolves over time, typed gamma(3,4) edges expose semantic drift and absorbing states, and cooperative promises carry causality. + ### [seo-audit](seo-audit/SKILL.md) Identify search-discoverability problems through evidence, prioritize the work, and distinguish technical defects from content opportunities. diff --git a/llms.txt b/llms.txt index e495f75..8f6d310 100644 --- a/llms.txt +++ b/llms.txt @@ -113,6 +113,7 @@ - [restic](restic/SKILL.md): Install, configure, operate, secure, automate, tune, troubleshoot, and recover restic backups across local, SFTP, S3-compatible, cloud, and REST backends. Use when creating or managing a restic repository, designing backup or retention policy, validating restores, handling repository health or locks, moving repositories, or building safe scheduled backup jobs. Do not use for a generic file-copy task that does not need encrypted, deduplicated snapshots. - [secure-software-engineering](secure-software-engineering/SKILL.md): Use when designing or implementing software securely: define security requirements, threat-model a feature, choose secure defaults, design authentication and authorization, handle untrusted data and secrets, evaluate dependencies, or review security-sensitive changes. Use for prevention during requirements, design, implementation, and review; not for post-build security assessments or scanning an existing codebase. - [security-audit-methodology](security-audit-methodology/SKILL.md): Plan authorized security reviews with threat modeling, architecture and dependency audits, and vulnerability classification. Use for scoped defensive security assessment. Do not use for offensive operations, unauthorized testing, or security control implementation. +- [semantic-spacetime](semantic-spacetime/SKILL.md): Model and diagnose shared semantic ground between agents with Semantic Spacetime (Mark Burgess, 2014-2025): a discrete graph model of meaning over time, where local proper time replaces global clocks, causality is cooperative promises, and gamma(3,4) graphs expose semantic drift, world model divergence, and absorbing states. Use for designing convergent self-healing coordination, modeling intent and trajectories over time, mapping promises onto spacetime, diagnosing semantic drift or dead-ends, and analyzing temporal blindness in agents. Do not use for physics or relativity, pure vector embeddings or RAG without temporal-causal structure, enforceable centralized control, simple single-agent prompting, or tool manuals — route those to the appropriate skill. - [seo-audit](seo-audit/SKILL.md): Audit websites and pages for technical SEO, on-page SEO, schema markup, content discoverability, and answer-engine readiness. Use when prioritizing search visibility improvements. - [site-reliability-engineering](site-reliability-engineering/SKILL.md): Design, operate, and improve reliable production systems with SLOs, incident command, observability, error budgets, and operational practices. - [slack](slack/SKILL.md): Operate Slack workspaces from a terminal or agent: list channels, read messages, follow threads, search message history, list files, and verify inbound webhook signatures — with a bundled slack-cli script that is read-only by default and gates every send behind a --dry-run/--yes confirmation. Use when an agent needs to read or post Slack data, triage incidents, or answer questions about what was said in a workspace. Do not use for building Slack apps or bots (that is application development) or workspace administration like user provisioning and org settings (that is the Slack admin console). diff --git a/references/skill-triggers.md b/references/skill-triggers.md index 4f71bf7..084ca55 100644 --- a/references/skill-triggers.md +++ b/references/skill-triggers.md @@ -112,3 +112,4 @@ Each skill's `description` field is the canonical routing contract. This conveni | "Stripe", "account balance", "payment intent", "subscription", "cancel subscription", "stripe-cli", "Stripe payments", "payment status" | [stripe](../stripe/SKILL.md) | | "mental health", "DSM", "DSM-5", "DSM-5-TR", "psychiatric symptoms", "symptoms could be", "diagnostic criteria", "mental health condition", "neurocognitive condition", "neurological condition", "differential diagnosis", "explain a diagnosis", "questions for my clinician", "questions for my therapist", "delirium vs dementia", "ADHD vs anxiety" | [dsm5](../dsm5/SKILL.md) | | "promise-theory", "promise theory", "promises" | [promise-theory](../promise-theory/SKILL.md) | +| "semantic spacetime", "semantic drift", "shared meaning", "world model divergence", "semantic ground", "temporal blindness", "gamma(3,4)" | [semantic-spacetime](../semantic-spacetime/SKILL.md) | diff --git a/semantic-spacetime/LICENSE b/semantic-spacetime/LICENSE new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a527323 --- /dev/null +++ b/semantic-spacetime/LICENSE @@ -0,0 +1,21 @@ +MIT License + +Copyright (c) 2026 Groktopus + +Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy +of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal +in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights +to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell +copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is +furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: + +The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all +copies or substantial portions of the Software. + +THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR +IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, +FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE +AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER +LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, +OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE +SOFTWARE. diff --git a/semantic-spacetime/README.md b/semantic-spacetime/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..125dddd --- /dev/null +++ b/semantic-spacetime/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,41 @@ +# Semantic Spacetime + +Model meaning over time with Mark Burgess's Semantic Spacetime: a discrete graph method for designing shared semantic ground between agents, diagnosing semantic drift, and building coordination that converges on intended meaning. + +## Why Install This Skill + +Multi-agent systems keep failing on meaning: two agents start from the same instructions and quietly diverge, nobody notices that a shared term no longer means the same thing to each side, and the system dead-ends in a state where information stops flowing. This skill gives your agent a working method for that problem — model the space of meaning as a graph, treat every local change as a unit of time, and measure where interpretations drift apart instead of guessing. + +After installing, your agent can map a team of agents onto a semantic spacetime with typed events, things, and concepts, trace how intent propagates through promises and acceptances, diagnose drift and divergence with a bounded procedure, and write an analysis report with concrete interventions and a verification plan. The method is grounded in Burgess's arXiv series (2014-2025) and his earlier Promise Theory, and it is honest about what is verified, what is not, and what is extrapolation. + +## What You Get + +| Contents | Provides | +|---|---| +| `SKILL.md` | When to use Semantic Spacetime, when not to, and what to load for the task at hand | +| `references/foundations.md` | The academic core: definitions, the γ(3,4) formalism, proper time, causality, the promise substrate, and adjacent fields | +| `references/glossary.md` | Heading-led definitions of every term the skill uses | +| `references/bibliography.md` | Annotated primary sources with URLs, organized by area | +| `templates/` | The `sst-model.yaml.tmpl` model format (agents, nodes, edges, acceptances, trajectories, observations) and the `sst-analysis.md.tmpl` report skeleton | +| `evals/` | Output-quality evals for the skill | +| `LICENSE` | MIT license | + +## Quick Start + +1. Copy `templates/sst-model.yaml.tmpl` to a working file (for example `sst-model.yaml`). +2. Fill in your system: agents with roles and promises, semantic nodes typed as events, things, or concepts, edges with link values from -3 to 3, plus acceptances, trajectories, and observations. Every field has an inline comment explaining it; the delimited example block shows a complete model. +3. Copy `templates/sst-analysis.md.tmpl` to a working file (for example `sst-analysis.md`). +4. Fill the report skeleton: system description, the semantic spacetime map, drift/divergence/absorbing-state findings, interventions, and a verification/measurement plan. + +## Triggers + +- Designing or analyzing shared semantic ground between agents +- Modeling intent or meaning changing over time (trajectories, drift, convergence) +- Designing convergent, self-healing coordination where state is measured against desired meaning +- Diagnosing semantic drift, divergence, or dead-ends (absorbing states) +- Mapping promises onto spacetime (trajectories, propagation, causality) +- Analyzing temporal blindness in agents (state tracking, event ordering, causality) + +## Requirements + +Nothing to install. The skill is Markdown, YAML templates, and JSON evals; the bundled model format is versioned (`sst-model-v1`) and documented in the template itself. Works with any agent client that loads Agent Skills. diff --git a/semantic-spacetime/SKILL.md b/semantic-spacetime/SKILL.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ada1d2b --- /dev/null +++ b/semantic-spacetime/SKILL.md @@ -0,0 +1,158 @@ +--- +name: semantic-spacetime +description: >- + Model and diagnose shared semantic ground between agents with Semantic + Spacetime (Mark Burgess, 2014-2025): a discrete graph model of meaning over + time, where local proper time replaces global clocks, causality is + cooperative promises, and gamma(3,4) graphs expose semantic drift, world + model divergence, and absorbing states. Use for designing convergent + self-healing coordination, modeling intent and trajectories over time, + mapping promises onto spacetime, diagnosing semantic drift or dead-ends, + and analyzing temporal blindness in agents. Do not use for physics or + relativity, pure vector embeddings or RAG without temporal-causal structure, + enforceable centralized control, simple single-agent prompting, or tool + manuals — route those to the appropriate skill. +license: MIT +--- + +# Semantic Spacetime + +Semantic Spacetime (SST) is Mark Burgess's discrete, graph-theoretic model of +meaning over time. A *semantic element* is one autonomous agent plus its scalar +promises; a *semantic spacetime* is a collection of such elements in which a +local change in state, promises, or configuration is a local unit of time. Time +is proper time — there is no global clock (the precedence view Burgess credits +to Lamport). Causality is cooperative: every adjacency requires an offer (+) and +an acceptance (−) promise on both ends, so space is made of cooperating nodes +and edges. The 2025 γ(3,4) formalism types the graph: three node meta-types +(events, things, concepts) connected by four link types (0 = NEAR, ±1 = LEADS +TO, ±2 = CONTAINS, ±3 = EXPRESSES). Absorbing states in partial graphs leak +information, and intentionality enters at the boundary. SST is built on Promise +Theory — for the promise vocabulary, load [promise-theory](../promise-theory/SKILL.md) +instead of re-deriving it here. This skill is a thin router: load the dense +material only when a row in [Load By Need](#load-by-need) matches your task. + +## When to use + +- **When you need to design or analyze shared semantic ground between agents** + — model what "meaning" means in this system (what does a concept, term, or + promise mean to whom), producing a γ(3,4) map of the shared semantic ground + as the artifact. +- **When you need to model intent or meaning over time** — trajectories, + drift, and convergence of understanding between agents, agents and humans, + or agents and their instructions; the artifact is a semantic trajectory with + recorded observations. +- **When you need to design convergent, self-healing coordination** — a loop + in which state is continuously measured against a desired meaning and + repaired toward it; model the loop as semantic elements whose local change + is time. +- **When you need to diagnose semantic drift, divergence, or dead-ends** — + absorbing states, meaning gaps, and non-converging agents; the artifact is a + drift finding with the leaking boundary identified. +- **When you need to map promises onto spacetime** — trajectories, promise + propagation, and causality between agents; model each promise as an edge and + trace how intent propagates through the graph. +- **When you need to analyze temporal blindness in agents** — state tracking, + event ordering, and causality failures where an agent cannot tell what + happened before what; model event order via proper time instead of a shared + clock. + +## When not to use + +- **Physics or relativity** — SST is not a theory of quantum gravity or + spacetime physics; it assumes no manifold structure and no momentum. Do not + use it for physics problems; those belong to a physics domain. +- **Pure vector embeddings, RAG, or semantic search without temporal-causal + structure** — a static embedding index has no proper time, no causality, and + no trajectories to model; route to the embedding or semantic-search tool's + own skill instead. +- **Enforceable centralized control** — if you can command and verify + compliance directly, SST's cooperative-promise machinery is overhead, not + insight (the same boundary promise-theory draws); route to + [promise-theory](../promise-theory/SKILL.md) when you need the control-vs- + cooperation discussion. +- **Simple single-agent prompting** — one model and one prompt with no + delegation or meaning space to model needs no spacetime vocabulary. +- **Tool manuals or framework documentation** — routing to the tool's own + skill is always better than framing the tool with SST. + +## Load By Need + +| Need | Load | +|------|------| +| Re-derive the formal model: semantic element, semantic spacetime, proper time, γ(3,4) typing rules, learning/knowledge formalism, promise substrate | [references/foundations.md](references/foundations.md) | +| Hit an unfamiliar term while modeling or diagnosing | [references/glossary.md](references/glossary.md) | +| Find or verify a primary source — the papers, project pages, and adjacent work behind a claim | [references/bibliography.md](references/bibliography.md) | + +## Quick Start + +Both templates are self-documenting; fill them per the inline comments. Run +these steps from the skill directory (`semantic-spacetime/`): + +1. **Draft an SST model.** Copy `templates/sst-model.yaml.tmpl` to a working + file (for example `sst-model.yaml`) and replace the example values: declare + agents (id, role, promises), semantic nodes (id, type in + {event, thing, concept}), edges (from, to, link in -3..3), acceptances, + trajectories, and observations. The machine-delimited block between + `# --- example ---` and `# --- end example ---` shows a complete, valid + model to imitate. +2. **Model a system as a semantic spacetime.** Every local change in state, + promises, or configuration is a unit of proper time; record it as an + observation. Connect nodes with the four γ(3,4) link types and route intent + along the edges. +3. **Draft the analysis report.** Copy `templates/sst-analysis.md.tmpl` to a + working file (for example `sst-analysis.md`) and fill the skeleton: system + description → semantic spacetime map → drift/divergence/absorbing-state + findings → interventions → verification/measurement plan. +4. **Diagnose drift when agents disagree.** If agents diverge, treat the + disagreement as an observation, measure the semantic distance between their + interpretations, and locate the absorbing state or leaking boundary where + information stops flowing. + +## Related Skills + +| Skill | Route when... | +|-------|---------------| +| [promise-theory](../promise-theory/SKILL.md) | You need the substrate vocabulary SST builds on: promises, offers and acceptances, convergence, the Downstream Principle, and coordination diagnosis (also routed from `references/foundations.md`) | +| [agent-evals-and-observability](../agent-evals-and-observability/SKILL.md) | You need to turn measurement and verification of semantic claims into evals, traces, and release gates (also routed from `references/foundations.md`) | +| [agent-council](../agent-council/SKILL.md) | You want structured multi-agent debate as a mechanism for negotiating shared meaning between agents | +| [workflow-architect](../bundles/workflow-architect/SKILL.md) | You want to encode a semantic-spacetime-informed workflow as a reusable skill bundle | +| [artifact-pyramids](../artifact-pyramids/SKILL.md) | You need to structure SST evidence — models, maps, observations — as summaries → analysis → evidence dossiers | +| [agent-skills](../agent-skills/SKILL.md) | You are authoring or editing an Agent Skills-format skill — the format this skill follows | +| [cli-builder](../cli-builder/SKILL.md) | You are building or refactoring the bundled CLI for SST models (it will follow cli-builder conventions: non-interactive, `--json`, `--dry-run`) | + +## Gotchas + +1. **Provenance honesty.** The theory files tag every factual claim + `[VERIFIED]` (confirmed in a primary source fetched during research) or + `[UNVERIFIED]` (secondary or inferred), and label original synthesis + `EXTRAPOLATION`. Preserve those markers when you reuse the material; + dropping a marker silently upgrades a claim. See the provenance block in + [references/foundations.md](references/foundations.md). +2. **The theory is semi-formal and unrefereed.** Burgess published the series + as self-published notes with no intention of seeking refereed publication, + and "some proofs [are] left to the reader." Use SST as a reasoning aid, not + a proof system. See the status section in + [references/foundations.md](references/foundations.md). +3. **Local time ≠ global clock.** Proper time is per semantic element: a local + change is that element's unit of time. There is no shared clock ordering all + events; global order is an observer-relative artifact. See the proper-time + section in [references/foundations.md](references/foundations.md). +4. **Semantics requires measurement.** Meaning cannot be asserted before it is + measured at the right scale — "dynamics always trumps semantics." SST's + spacelike (repeated trials, constant state) and timelike (continuously + adapting) measurements are the two ways to stabilize observation; see the + measurement-duality section of [references/foundations.md](references/foundations.md). +5. **Promise-keeping must be stored as data.** The gap documented in the + CFEngine lineage — reporting whether a promise is kept right now without + ever storing promise-keeping as queryable data — is exactly the gap SST's + semantic-time record axis addresses. Record observations as versioned data + or trust cannot accumulate. + +## Exit Conditions + +Stop when the system is modeled as a semantic spacetime — semantic elements, +γ(3,4) edges, trajectories, and acceptances recorded — drift/divergence/ +absorbing-state findings are written down, and a verification/measurement plan +is stated. When diagnosing drift, stop after three non-converging passes and +report the evidence instead of re-litigating the same model. diff --git a/semantic-spacetime/evals/evals.json b/semantic-spacetime/evals/evals.json new file mode 100644 index 0000000..76a35c8 --- /dev/null +++ b/semantic-spacetime/evals/evals.json @@ -0,0 +1,90 @@ +{ + "schema_version": 1, + "skill_name": "semantic-spacetime", + "evals": [ + { + "id": "gamma-3-4-typing-rules", + "case_set": "release", + "prompt": "I need to model a knowledge graph with the semantic-spacetime formalism. Explain the 2025 gamma(3,4) representation from the skill's foundations reference: the node meta-types it defines and the four link types with their integer values and meaning.", + "expected_output": "gamma(3,4) defines exactly three node meta-types: events (temporary, timelike process agents), things (persistent, spacelike realized agents), and concepts (invariant, unrealized potential). It defines exactly four link types: 0 = NEAR, symmetric, covering equivalence, similarity, proximity, and correlation; +/-1 = LEADS TO, directed, covering temporal and causal order such as enables, causes, precedes, and depends on; +/-2 = CONTAINS, directed, covering containment, membership, generalization, and coarse-graining; +/-3 = EXPRESSES, directed, covering attribute, name/value, and property. No additional link types exist in the formalism.", + "assertions": [ + "response_contains:LEADS TO", + "response_contains:EXPRESSES", + "response_contains:concepts", + "response_not_contains:four node types", + "activation_evidence_contains:SKILL.md", + "exit_status:completed" + ] + }, + { + "id": "proper-time-lamport-precedence", + "case_set": "release", + "prompt": "How does semantic spacetime define time, and how is causality established between agents? Which distributed-systems researcher is credited with the precedence view of time that semantic spacetime builds on?", + "expected_output": "Time is proper time: a local unit of time is any local change in a semantic element's state, promises, or configuration, as observed by the agent concerned, and there is no global clock shared across the spacetime. The precedence view of time as a relative transition system goes back to Leslie Lamport, whose 1978 paper on time, clocks, and the ordering of events in a distributed system showed that time can at best be understood as a precedence relation. Causality is cooperative: each adjacency requires both an offer and an acceptance promise on both ends, so space is made up of cooperating nodes and edges.", + "assertions": [ + "response_contains:proper time", + "response_contains:Lamport", + "response_contains:no global clock", + "response_not_contains:Lorentz invariance", + "activation_evidence_contains:SKILL.md", + "exit_status:completed" + ] + }, + { + "id": "absorbing-states-information-leak", + "case_set": "release", + "prompt": "My agent system sometimes reaches a state where no agent changes anything anymore and information stops flowing. What does semantic spacetime call these states, what happens to information there, and what does it say about where intent or policy can be injected?", + "expected_output": "These are absorbing states in a partial graph. Absorbing states are non-conserving of information: a graph process leaks information at them, closely associated with division by zero, which signals a loss of closure and the need for manual injection of remedial information. The boundary information at the leak is where intentionality can enter. In diagnosis, treat them as dead-ends in the gamma(3,4) map where meaning accumulates without propagating, and plan a manual or policy injection at that boundary.", + "assertions": [ + "response_contains:absorbing states", + "response_contains:non-conserving", + "response_contains:intentionality", + "response_not_contains:fully converged success", + "activation_evidence_contains:SKILL.md", + "exit_status:completed" + ] + }, + { + "id": "semantic-drift-diagnosis", + "case_set": "release", + "prompt": "Two agents in our system started from the same instructions but now produce incompatible reports: one means 'customer' as the paying account, the other as any user who ever signed up. Diagnose this using semantic spacetime vocabulary, and name the constructs you would use to model meaning changing over time.", + "expected_output": "This is semantic drift: the shared semantic ground between the two agents has diverged over time. Model each agent's interpretation as a trajectory through semantic spacetime, and measure the semantic distance between the two 'customer' concepts at successive observations to quantify the divergence. Because semantics requires measurement, record observations of each agent's usage at successive local times (spacelike or timelike measurement) rather than assuming the two interpretations still coincide. The two concepts have drifted apart along their trajectories, so re-anchor them and re-confirm the shared ground on a refresh budget.", + "assertions": [ + "response_contains:semantic drift", + "response_contains:trajectory", + "response_contains:semantic distance", + "response_not_contains:retrain the embedding model", + "activation_evidence_contains:SKILL.md", + "exit_status:completed" + ] + }, + { + "id": "metric-versus-semantic-distance", + "case_set": "release", + "prompt": "We have two ways to compare how close two concepts are in our system: coordinate similarity and interpretation similarity. Explain both from the semantic spacetime foundations, and give at least two worked examples of the interpretation-similarity kind.", + "expected_output": "The foundations distinguish metric (quantitative) distance, a measure of coordinate-similarity in position, from semantic (qualitative) distance, a measure of similarity in interpretation. Worked examples of semantic distance from the paper include Hamming distance, hop counts in an associative network, semantic hashing, and sparse distributed representations. The two measures can disagree: two concepts may be close in coordinates yet far in interpretation, so the choice of measure must follow the question being asked.", + "assertions": [ + "response_contains:coordinate-similarity", + "response_contains:Hamming", + "response_contains:hop counts", + "response_not_contains:Euclidean only", + "activation_evidence_contains:SKILL.md", + "exit_status:completed" + ] + }, + { + "id": "pure-embeddings-anti-trigger", + "case_set": "release", + "prompt": "We have a vector database with embeddings for all our documents and want to build semantic search over it. There is no temporal or causal structure, just static embeddings and similarity scores. Should we use the semantic-spacetime skill for this, and if not, why not?", + "expected_output": "No — do not use semantic spacetime for pure vector embeddings or RAG without temporal-causal structure. Semantic spacetime is a discrete graph model of meaning over time; a static embedding index has no proper time, no cooperative-promise causality, and no trajectories to model, so the machinery is overhead rather than insight. Route to the embedding or semantic-search tool's own skill instead. Use semantic spacetime only when there is meaning changing over time, causal-temporal structure, or agents whose shared semantic ground needs to be modeled.", + "assertions": [ + "response_contains:do not use semantic spacetime", + "response_contains:without temporal-causal structure", + "response_contains:shared semantic ground", + "response_not_contains:model the embedding index as semantic elements", + "activation_evidence_contains:SKILL.md", + "exit_status:completed" + ] + } + ] +} diff --git a/semantic-spacetime/references/bibliography.md b/semantic-spacetime/references/bibliography.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0f08c8f --- /dev/null +++ b/semantic-spacetime/references/bibliography.md @@ -0,0 +1,251 @@ +# Bibliography — Primary Sources for Semantic Spacetime + +**Load this file when you need to find or verify a source** — which paper says +X, or where a claim in [foundations.md](foundations.md) or +[glossary.md](glossary.md) comes from. Every entry below carries a URL that was +checked for reachability during the research phase (2026-08-12); the +`[VERIFIED]`/`[UNVERIFIED]` markers describe the source's verification level as +used in [foundations.md](foundations.md). No entry here is fabricated: each +appears in the research corpus's source lists. For the promise-theory substrate +sources, cross-reference the promise-theory skill's own bibliography. + +--- + +## 1. The Semantic Spacetime series (Burgess) + +- Burgess, M. *Spacetimes with Semantics* (2014). arXiv:1411.5563 [cs.MA]. + Part I: "From Einstein to Milner." Defines the agenda: relationships between + objects constitute space; their change is time; observer semantics are + integral to spacetime. [VERIFIED] + URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1411.5563 +- Burgess, M. *Spacetimes with Semantics (II): Scaling of agency, semantics, + and tenancy* (2015). arXiv:1505.01716 [cs.MA]. Part II: how agency scales via + super-agents/sub-spaces; scalar vs. vector promises; occupancy and tenancy. + [VERIFIED] + URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1505.01716 +- Burgess, M. *Spacetimes with Semantics (III): The Structure of Functional + Knowledge Representation and Artificial Reasoning* (2016, rev. 2017). + arXiv:1608.02193 [cs.AI]. Part III (122 pages), the most formal document: + Definitions 1-9, Lemmas 1-3, the four irreducible associations, the + learning/knowledge formalism. [VERIFIED] + URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.02193 + Full text: https://arxiv.org/html/1608.02193v4 +- Burgess, M. *On the scaling of functional spaces, from smart cities to cloud + computing* (2016). arXiv:1602.06091 [cs.CY]. The "functional space" reading + of SST applied to the empirically observed power-law scaling of cities. + [VERIFIED] + URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.06091 +- Burgess, M. *A Spacetime Approach to Generalized Cognitive Reasoning in + Multi-scale Learning* (2017). arXiv:1702.04638 [cs.AI]. A hybrid + reasoning/pattern-recognition architecture as the ML instantiation of SST + reasoning. [VERIFIED] + URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.04638 +- Burgess, M. *Testing the Quantitative Spacetime Hypothesis using Artificial + Narrative Comprehension (I): Bootstrapping Meaning from Episodic Narrative + viewed as a Feature Landscape* (2020). arXiv:2010.08126 [cs.AI]. SST's + empirical arm: parsing narrative via measurable size/time cues as an event + "landscape"/interferometry; concepts as process invariants. [VERIFIED] + URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.08126 +- Burgess, M. *Testing the Quantitative Spacetime Hypothesis using Artificial + Narrative Comprehension (II): Establishing the Geometry of Invariant + Concepts, Themes, and Namespaces* (2020). arXiv:2010.08125 [cs.AI]. Part II: + reconstructing concepts via multiscale interferometry based on the four + fundamental spacetime relationships. [VERIFIED] + URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.08125 +- Burgess, M.; Gerlits, A. *Continuous Integration of Data Histories into + Consistent Namespaces* (2022). arXiv:2204.00470 [cs.DC]. Versioned + coordinates / namespaces for data pipelines — SST's temporal-consistency + scheme. [VERIFIED] + URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.00470 +- Burgess, M. *Agent Semantics, Semantic Spacetime, and Graphical Reasoning* + (2025). arXiv:2506.07756 [cs.AI]. The current formal statement: the γ(3,4) + representation (3 node meta-types × 4 link types), the nine typing design + rules, absorbing states as information leaks, causal-set kinship. [VERIFIED] + URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.07756 + Full text: https://arxiv.org/html/2506.07756v2 +- Burgess, M. *On The Role of Intentionality in Knowledge Representation: + Analyzing Scene Context for Cognitive Agents with a Tiny Language Model* + (2025). arXiv:2507.10000 [cs.AI]. Intentionality in data via scale + separation. [VERIFIED] + URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.10000 +- Burgess, M. *γ(3,4) 'Attention' in Cognitive Agents: Ontology-Free Knowledge + Representations With Promise Theoretic Semantics* (2025). arXiv:2512.19084 + [cs.AI]. SST as a bridge between vectorized ML and knowledge graphs without + relying on language models implicitly. [VERIFIED] + URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.19084 + +## 2. Author's web project pages and essays + +- Burgess, M. *Semantic Spacetimes* (project page). "A semantic spacetime is a + discrete graph, which evolves, and whose properties vary from point to + point." [VERIFIED] + URL: http://markburgess.org/spacetime.html +- Burgess, M. *Semantic Spacetime — What is it?* The best short primary + exposition; source of the "not quantum gravity," Lamport-relativity, + spacelike/timelike measurement, and cooperative-causality material. + [VERIFIED] + URL: http://markburgess.org/semantic_spacetime.html +- Burgess, M. *The Semantic Spacetime Project: Bringing technology and physics + together* (2016 essay). "For inspiration, not for refereed publication." + [VERIFIED] + URL: http://markburgess.org/blog_spacetime3.html +- Burgess, M. *Semantics of Spacetime and Cognitive Processes* (Kavli salon + write-up, Medium, 2022). SST as a formal bridge for neuroscience findings. + [VERIFIED] + URL: https://medium.com/@mark-burgess-oslo-mb/semantics-of-spacetime-and-cognitive-processes-d39214e9c44a +- Burgess, M. *Semantic Spacetime 1: The Shape of Knowledge* (Medium, 2025). + [VERIFIED — existence and framing; URL from search index] + URL: https://mark-burgess-oslo-mb.medium.com/semantic-spacetime-1-the-shape-of-knowledge-86daced424a5 +- Burgess, M. *Universal Data Analytics as Semantic Spacetime* (Medium series, + 2022). [VERIFIED — existence and framing; URL from search index] + URL: https://mark-burgess-oslo-mb.medium.com/universal-data-analytics-as-semantic-spacetime-dee7a76661c2 +- Burgess, M. *Motion of the Third Kind I & II* (ResearchGate, 2021-22). + Existence verified; full texts not fetched. [UNVERIFIED in detail] + URL: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351492269 + URL: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360757745 +- Burgess, M. *Notes on Trust As A Causal Basis For Social Science* (2022). + ResearchGate; DOI 10.2139/ssrn.4252501. [VERIFIED — existence] + URL: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362387906 +- Burgess, M. *The Semantic Spacetime Hypothesis: A Guide to the Semantic + Spacetime of Information* (2020 note). ResearchGate publication 344338994. + Existence verified; full contents not accessible. [UNVERIFIED in detail] + URL: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344338994 +- Burgess, M. *In Search of Certainty: The Science of Our Information + Infrastructure* (χtAxis Press, 2013). The popular introduction; contents not + fetched during research. [UNVERIFIED in detail] + URL: https://markburgess.org/certainty.html +- Burgess, M. *Smart Spacetime* (χtAxis Press, 2019). ISBN 978-1797773704. + Book-length exposition; contents not fetched. [UNVERIFIED in detail] + URL: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1797773704 +- Burgess, M. *SSTorytime* (software). The open-source SST knowledge-graph + database (Go over PostgreSQL, Apache-2.0) with the N4L note language and + MCP-SST connector; also the older repository and a Julia port. [VERIFIED] + URL: https://github.com/markburgess/SSTorytime + URL: https://github.com/markburgess/SemanticSpaceTime + URL: https://juliaknowledge.github.io/SemanticSpacetime.jl/dev/ + +## 3. Spacetime-Entangled Networks and consensus + +- Borrill, P.; Burgess, M.; Karp, A.; Kasuya, A. *Spacetime-Entangled Networks + (I): Relativity and Observability of Stepwise Consensus* (2018, rev. 2020). + arXiv:1807.08549 [cs.DC]. SST/promise semantics at the consensus layer: + entanglement as co-dependent evolution of state; promises of sequential, + in-order, atomically confirmed delivery. [VERIFIED] + URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.08549 + +## 4. Promise theory (the substrate) + +- Bergstra, J.A.; Burgess, M. *A static theory of promises* (2008, v5 2014). + arXiv:0810.3294. The foundational promise-vs-obligation paper. [VERIFIED] + URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/0810.3294 +- Bergstra, J.; Bethke, I.; Burgess, M. *A process algebra based framework for + promise theory* (2007). arXiv:0707.0744. The process-algebra root of promise + semantics. [VERIFIED] + URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/0707.0744 +- Burgess, M.; Bergstra, J.A. *Promise Theory: Principles and Applications* + (χtAxis Press, 2014; 2nd ed. 2019). The canonical statement; free PDF. + [VERIFIED] + URL: https://markburgess.org/BookOfPromises.pdf + Page: https://markburgess.org/promises.html + ACM DL: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.5555/2636996 +- Bergstra, J.A. *Promise Theory as a Tool for Informaticians* (Transmathematica, + 2020). DOI 10.36285/tm.35. Independent scholarly overview. [VERIFIED] + URL: https://transmathematica.org/index.php/journal/article/view/35 +- Burgess, M. *Thinking in Promises: Designing Systems for Cooperation* + (O'Reilly, 2015). ISBN 9781491917879. The practitioner's companion. + [VERIFIED] + URL: https://books.google.com/books/about/Thinking_in_Promises.html?id=ibL4CQAAQBAJ +- Burgess, M.; Prangsma, E. *Koalja: from Data Plumbing to Smart Workspaces in + the Extended Cloud* (2019). arXiv:1907.01796. The data-pipeline lineage of + the SST project. [VERIFIED] + URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.01796 + +## 5. Adjacent and contextual work + +- Lamport, L. *Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed + System.* *CACM* 21(7):558-565, 1978. The precedence view of time Burgess + credits as SST's origin. [VERIFIED] + URL: https://amturing.acm.org/p558-lamport.pdf +- Mattern, F. *Virtual Time and Global States of Distributed Systems* (1988/89). + Vector clocks. [VERIFIED] + URL: https://vs.inf.ethz.ch/publ/papers/VirtTimeGlobStates.pdf +- Kowalski, R.; Sergot, M. *A logic-based calculus of events.* *New Generation + Computing* 4:67-95, 1986. [VERIFIED] + URL: https://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~rak/papers/event%20calculus.pdf +- McCarthy, J.; Hayes, P. *Some philosophical problems from the standpoint of + artificial intelligence.* *Machine Intelligence* 4, 1969. [VERIFIED] + URL: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/mcchay69.pdf +- Tolman, E.C. *Cognitive maps in rats and men.* *Psychological Review* + 55(4):189-208, 1948. [VERIFIED] + URL: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1949-00103-001 +- O'Keefe, J.; Nadel, L. *The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map.* Clarendon Press, + 1978. [VERIFIED] + URL: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10103569/ +- Hafting, T.; Fyhn, M.; Molden, S.; Moser, M.-B.; Moser, E.I. *Microstructure + of a spatial map in the entorhinal cortex.* *Nature* 436:801-806, 2005. + [VERIFIED] + URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature03721 +- Constantinescu, A.O.; O'Reilly, J.X.; Behrens, T.E.J. *Organizing conceptual + knowledge in humans with a gridlike code.* *Science* 352(6292):1464-1468, + 2016. DOI 10.1126/science.aaf0941. [VERIFIED] + URL: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaf0941 +- Ralph, M.A.L.; Jefferies, E.; Patterson, K.; Rogers, T.T. *The neural and + computational bases of semantic cognition.* *Nature Reviews Neuroscience* + 18:42-55, 2017. [VERIFIED] + URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn.2016.150 +- Osgood, C.E.; Suci, G.J.; Tannenbaum, P.H. *The Measurement of Meaning.* + Univ. of Illinois Press, 1957. The "semantic differential." [VERIFIED] + URL: https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p745393 +- Gärdenfors, P. *Conceptual Spaces: The Geometry of Thought.* MIT Press, 2000. + [VERIFIED] + URL: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262572194/conceptual-spaces/ +- Harris, Z.S. *Distributional Structure.* *Word* 10(2-3):146-162, 1954. + [VERIFIED] + URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00437956.1954.11659520 +- Landauer, T.K.; Dumais, S.T. *A solution to Plato's problem: The latent + semantic analysis theory...* *Psychological Review* 104(2):211-240, 1997. + [VERIFIED] + URL: https://www.stat.cmu.edu/~cshalizi/350/2008/readings/Landauer-Dumais.pdf +- Turney, P.D.; Pantel, P. *From Frequency to Meaning: Vector Space Models of + Semantics.* *JAIR* 37:141-188, 2010. [VERIFIED] + URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1003.1141 +- Mikolov, T.; Sutskever, I.; Chen, K.; Corrado, G.; Dean, J. *Distributed + Representations of Words and Phrases and their Compositionality* (2013). + arXiv:1310.4546. word2vec skip-gram. [VERIFIED] + URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1310.4546 +- Sorkin, R.D. *Causal sets: discrete gravity* (2003). arXiv:gr-qc/0309009. + [VERIFIED] + URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0309009 + (The program originates with Myrheim, *Statistical Geometry*, CERN preprint + TH.2538, 1978 — cited in arXiv:2506.07756; citation chain verified, + [VERIFIED].) +- Surya, S. *The causal set approach to quantum gravity* (2019). + arXiv:1903.11544. [VERIFIED] + URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.11544 +- Konopka, T.; Markopoulou, F.; Smolin, L. *Quantum graphity* (2006). + arXiv:hep-th/0611197. [VERIFIED] + URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0611197 +- Milner, R. *The Space and Motion of Communicating Agents.* Cambridge Univ. + Press, 2009. Bigraphs — the reference model Burgess builds on. [VERIFIED] + URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/space-and-motion-of-communicating-agents/ +- Gutiérrez, C.; Hurtado, C.; Vaisman, A. *Temporal RDF* (ESWC 2005). + [VERIFIED] + URL: https://users.dcc.uchile.cl/~cgutierr/papers/temporalRDF.pdf +- Erwig, M.; Güting, R.H.; Schneider, M.; Vazirgiannis, M. *Spatio-temporal + data types: an approach to modeling and querying moving objects in + databases.* *GeoInformatica* 3:265-291, 1999. [VERIFIED] + URL: https://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~erwig/papers/MovingObjects_GEOINF99.pdf +- Wikipedia. *Semantic spacetime.* Tertiary overview; use only to locate + primary URLs, treat claims [UNVERIFIED] unless corroborated by Burgess. + [UNVERIFIED — tertiary] + URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_spacetime +- Wikipedia. *Promise theory.* [UNVERIFIED — tertiary] + URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promise_theory +- Pavlyshin, V. *Semantic Space Time for AI Agent Ready Graphs* (2025, + Leanpub). Independent third-party book building on SST. ISBN 9798266921313. + [VERIFIED — listing] + URL: https://leanpub.com/sst-4-agenticai +- Dewar, N. *The epistemology of spacetime.* *Philosophy Compass* 17(4), 2022. + DOI 10.1111/phc3.12821. Philosophy of physics — semantics *of* spacetime, + distinct from Burgess's spacetime *of* semantics. [VERIFIED] + URL: https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/phc3.12821 diff --git a/semantic-spacetime/references/foundations.md b/semantic-spacetime/references/foundations.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d277886 --- /dev/null +++ b/semantic-spacetime/references/foundations.md @@ -0,0 +1,449 @@ +# Foundations — The Academic Core of Semantic Spacetime + +**Load this file when you need the definitions, the formal model, proper time, +causality, the γ(3,4) formalism, the learning/knowledge formalism, or an honest +assessment of the theory's status.** This is the academic anchor of the skill. +What belongs here: the academic theory of Semantic Spacetime (SST) as developed +by Mark Burgess (2014-2025) — definitions, the formal model, γ(3,4), proper +time, causality, the promise-theory substrate, and adjacent fields. What does +not belong here: quantum-gravity or physics derivation (this is not a physics +theory — see §4), the CFEngine/infrastructure application history, and the +agent-coordination synthesis; those belong to the skill's application and +agent-coordination references, which are added in a later milestone. For +one-line definitions see [glossary.md](glossary.md); for sources see +[bibliography.md](bibliography.md). + +**Provenance.** Every definition below is tagged with exactly one marker, +following the research corpus this skill was built from: + +- `[VERIFIED]` — confirmed directly in a primary source fetched during the + research phase (the arXiv papers, markburgess.org pages, and the fetched + secondary sources listed in [bibliography.md](bibliography.md)). +- `[UNVERIFIED]` — secondary-source or inferred; confirmed only via metadata, + search index, or an author's own secondary account. +- `EXTRAPOLATION` — original synthesis extending the theory to new domains; + never presented as a verified fact. + +The theory is semi-formal and deliberately unrefereed (§5). This file states +what is defined and verified, what is only informally claimed, and what is this +skill's own synthesis. Do not present unverified claims as fact and do not drop +markers when reusing this content. + +--- + +## 1. Authorship and scope of the term + +Semantic Spacetime is the coinage and project of **Mark Burgess** — the +physicist-turned-computer-scientist who created CFEngine — with the exact term +effectively his alone. A full-text search of arXiv for the exact phrase +"semantic spacetime" returns exactly 7 hits, all by Burgess; "semantic +space-time" returns zero hits [VERIFIED — arXiv full-text search performed +2026-08-12]. There is no independent academic school using the term. The +primary series is his arXiv papers 2014-2025: + +- *Spacetimes with Semantics* (2014), arXiv:1411.5563 [VERIFIED] +- *Spacetimes with Semantics (II): Scaling of agency, semantics, and tenancy* + (2015), arXiv:1505.01716 [VERIFIED] +- *Spacetimes with Semantics (III): The Structure of Functional Knowledge + Representation and Artificial Reasoning* (2016, rev. 2017), arXiv:1608.02193 — + the most formal document, canonical source for Definitions 1-9 and + Lemmas 1-3 [VERIFIED] +- *Agent Semantics, Semantic Spacetime, and Graphical Reasoning* (2025), + arXiv:2506.07756 — the current formal statement, introducing the γ(3,4) + representation [VERIFIED] + +Burgess states the intent directly: *"I have no interest or intention of +seeking to publish any of this work beyond making these notes available seeking +trusted review"* [VERIFIED — markburgess.org/blog_spacetime3.html]. SST is a +conceptual/modeling framework, deliberately not a quantum-gravity theory (§4). + +## 2. The formal model + +The formal skeleton comes from Part III (arXiv:1608.02193v4), which Burgess +calls "lengthy notes" laying foundations; and from the 2025 γ(3,4) paper. + +### Semantic element (Definition 1) + +> "A semantic element is a tuple ⟨Aᵢ, {π_scalar j, …}⟩ consisting of a single +> autonomous agent, and an optional number of scalar material promises." +> [VERIFIED — arXiv:1608.02193v4, Definition 1] + +An agent "surrounded by a halo of promises that imbue it with semantics" +[VERIFIED — same source]. The promises are scalar/material (the agent's own +capabilities and properties) as distinct from the vector/adjacency promises of +Part II that connect elements into a spacetime [VERIFIED — arXiv:1505.01716]. + +### Semantic spacetime (Definition 2) + +> "A collection of semantic elements, in any phase (gas or solid), for which a +> local change in state, promises or configuration represents a local unit of +> time." [VERIFIED — arXiv:1608.02193v4, Definition 2] + +Companion one-liner from the project hub: *"A semantic spacetime is a discrete +graph, which evolves, and whose properties vary from point to point."* +[VERIFIED — markburgess.org/spacetime.html]. The definition makes time a +property of local change within the graph, not an external axis. + +### Proper time and the absence of a global clock + +Time in SST is *proper time*: *"Time in this sense is the Aristotelian concept +of proper time as countable changes, as observed by the agent concerned."* +[VERIFIED — arXiv:2506.07756 §1.3]. There is no global clock: *"The view of +time as a relative transition system goes back to the work of Leslie Lamport… +Lamport rediscovered the idea that time can at best be understood as a +precedence relation, in a discrete spacetime context."* [VERIFIED — +markburgess.org/semantic_spacetime.html]. Lamport, "Time, Clocks, and the +Ordering of Events in a Distributed System," *CACM* 21(7):558-565, 1978, is the +credited origin of this precedence view [VERIFIED — same page; bibliography]. +Practically: two agents cannot share a wall-clock ordering of events; each +element's sequence of local changes is its own time. + +### Causality as cooperative promises + +Causality in SST is constituted by cooperative promises, not by imposed links. +Each adjacency requires both an offer (+) and an acceptance (−) promise between +the two ends: *"each node must both emit and absorb adjacency relations, +cooperatively… Thus space is made up of cooperating nodes and edges."* +[VERIFIED — markburgess.org/semantic_spacetime.html]. In the notation of the +papers, `S →(+π) R` means sender S offers promise π to receiver R, which +accepts with the complementary −π promise; influence passes only through the +overlap of offer and acceptance [VERIFIED — arXiv:1608.02193]. This is the +promise-theoretic spine that makes SST an agent model rather than a global +network model: every edge is a negotiated, observable relation. + +### The γ(3,4) formalism + +The 2025 paper (arXiv:2506.07756) refines the earlier four irreducible +associations (aggregation, causation, cooperation, similarity — [VERIFIED — +arXiv:1608.02193]) into a typed graph formalism called γ(3,4): **three node +meta-types × four link types** [VERIFIED — arXiv:2506.07756, Table 1]. + +The three node meta-types [VERIFIED — arXiv:2506.07756 §2.3]: + +| Meta-type | Symbol | Nature | +|---|---|---| +| Events | e | Temporary/ephemeral; timelike (process) agents; persist or change via "leads to" | +| Things | t | Persistent, physical/realized agents; "behave like matter"; spacelike (snapshot) | +| Concepts | c | Invariant notions that cannot be created or destroyed; virtual space of "unrealized" potential; materialized only by attaching to physical agents | + +The four link types, exactly [VERIFIED — arXiv:2506.07756, Table 1]: + +| Value | Label | Direction | Semantics | +|---|---|---|---| +| 0 | NEAR | symmetric | equivalence, similarity, proximity, correlation | +| ±1 | LEADS TO | directed | temporal/causal order: enables, causes, precedes, depends on | +| ±2 | CONTAINS | directed | containment, membership, generalization, coarse-graining | +| ±3 | EXPRESSES | directed | attribute, name/value, property, distinguishing mark | + +Burgess frames the four-link hypothesis itself as a hypothesis: *"This remains +a hypothesis for now, but it is not a particularly original one. Various +authors have suggested that spacetime concepts underpin natural language."* +[VERIFIED — arXiv:2506.07756 §2.2]. No additional link types exist in the +formalism; adding one would leave γ(3,4). + +### The nine typing design rules + +The node typing rules from arXiv:2506.07756 §2.3, exactly as verified +[VERIFIED — arXiv:2506.07756 §2.3]: + +1. Things may be contained but not expressed. +2. Concepts may be expressed but not contained. +3. Concepts become realized by anchoring them to things or events. +4. Verbs are dangling concepts without a subject or object to instantiate them. +5. Verbs anchored to subjects/objects (things) are events. +6. A realized state of being is an event. +7. An unrealized state of being is a concept. +8. A realized type of thing is a thing. +9. An unrealized type of thing is a concept. + +Note on the paper's abstract: it states that "The Semantic Spacetime postulates +bring predictability when reasoning," but the research phase could not verify an +enumerated postulate list in the fetched text (it would require a full read of +the paper's later sections). Treat the nine design rules above as the verified +typing content; do not present them as a numbered list of "the Semantic +Spacetime postulates" [UNVERIFIED — exact postulate set not verified]. + +### Location agents and signal agents + +Two auxiliary agent types complete the model's ontology [VERIFIED — +arXiv:1608.02193v4]: + +- **Location agents** (Definition 6): "irreducible sites that take up space and + can emit and absorb signal agents. They may not overlap." +- **Signal agents** (Definition 7): "They may be created and destroyed, + subsequently emitted and absorbed, by location agents. They can occupy the + same space, since they end up and accumulate at end points." + +## 3. Absorbing states and information leaks + +Absorbing states are a central diagnostic concept in SST: *"The ubiquitous +appearance of absorbing states in any partial graph means that a graph process +leaks information."* [VERIFIED — arXiv:2506.07756 abstract]. They are +"non-conserving of information" [VERIFIED — same source]. Burgess ties the +phenomenon to division by zero: the leak is *"closely associated with the issue +of division by zero, which signals a loss of closure and the need for manual +injection of remedial information"* — and the boundary where the graph leaks is +*"boundary information where intentionality can enter"* [VERIFIED — arXiv: +2506.07756 §1.3]. Practically: a dead-end node (an event or thing with no +outgoing LEADS TO/EXPRESSES edges that matter) accumulates meaning and stops +propagating it; intent or policy must be injected manually at that boundary. +For a bounded diagnosis procedure using this concept, see the skill's +diagnosis-and-debugging reference (added in a later milestone). + +## 4. The "not physics" boundary + +SST is explicitly **not** a theory of physics: *"Semantic spacetime is a +discrete model of spacetime, but it is not intended as a theory of quantum +gravity, in spite of some affinity with quantum systems."* [VERIFIED — +markburgess.org/semantic_spacetime.html]. Three consequences worth stating +[VERIFIED — markburgess.org/semantic_spacetime.html]: + +- No manifold structure is assumed: space is constituted by relationships + between objects, not by a background geometry. +- There is no concept of variable velocity, nor momentum: "a discrete spacetime + with finite number of states is not obviously a canonical system." +- The connection with canonical systems remains unknown. + +When a task is physics (general relativity, quantum gravity, kinematics), SST +is the wrong tool; route away at the SKILL.md "When not to use" boundary. + +## 5. Status: semi-formal and unrefereed + +The core series is a set of self-published notes, deliberately not submitted +for refereed publication: *"I have no interest or intention of seeking to +publish any of this work beyond making these notes available seeking trusted +review"* [VERIFIED — markburgess.org/blog_spacetime3.html]. Burgess also warns +of the scope: *"I have improvised with an eye on practical applications. It is +probably too ambitious in scope and detail, but bridges may serve a purpose even +with gaps,"* and *"Although not a complete theory, it lays out guidance on the +formulation of the basic issues of information propagation, with some proofs +left to the reader."* [VERIFIED — arXiv:1608.02193 preamble; markburgess.org/ +semantic_spacetime.html]. Use the formalism as a reasoning aid, not a proof +system. What is formal: the graph definitions (Definitions 1-9), the γ(3,4) +type system and its nine design rules, the learning/knowledge formalism with +its Nyquist bound and decay lemmas (§9), and the association-decomposition +algebra. What is semi-formal or metaphorical: the scaling/tenancy results of +Part II, and the physics parallels (Feynman/Schwinger readings, quantum-field +analogies, "logic emerges from reasoning") [VERIFIED — arXiv:1608.02193; +markburgess.org]. + +## 6. Promise theory as the substrate + +SST is formally built from Promise Theory: *"The chosen language here is +Promise Theory (2004-2014)"* [VERIFIED — markburgess.org/spacetime.html] and +*"the idea of semantic spacetime is based on an idea called Promise Theory"* +[VERIFIED — markburgess.org/blog_spacetime3.html]. Promise Theory is the joint +work of Mark Burgess and Jan A. Bergstra; its canonical statement is *Promise +Theory: Principles and Applications* (χtAxis Press, 2014; 2nd ed. 2019), which +describes itself as a "semi-formal language for modelling intent and its +outcome" [VERIFIED — markburgess.org/promises.html]. + +The primitives SST inherits, stated here in one line each and developed in +depth by the promise-theory skill, are: + +- **Promise** — an autonomous declaration of intended behavior, with a body + (label Λ), a type (τ), and a constraint (χ); written `S →(+π) R` for an offer + from promiser S to promisee R [VERIFIED — promise-theory foundations; + arXiv:1608.02193]. +- **Offer (+) and acceptance (−)** — every interaction requires both directions + to be promised independently; this is the semantic spine of adjacency in SST + (§2, Causality) [VERIFIED]. +- **Autonomy and locality** — agents are autonomous and inert except for the + promises they make; a strong form of locality, and the reason SST is an agent + model rather than a global network model [VERIFIED]. +- **Downstream Principle** — the most downstream party in a promise chain + carries the greatest causal responsibility for the outcome [VERIFIED — + promise-theory foundations]. +- **Convergence** — repeated local assessment toward a desired state; the + dynamic meaning of "convergent coordination" in SST [VERIFIED — promise-theory + foundations]. + +Do not re-derive promise definitions here. When you need the promise vocabulary +(promises, acceptances, bindings, assessment, trust, the Downstream Principle), +load [promise-theory](../../promise-theory/SKILL.md) or its +[foundations reference](../../promise-theory/references/foundations.md). This +skill's territory is the space/time of meaning built on top of those promises: +γ(3,4), trajectories, drift, semantic distance, shared semantic ground. + +## 7. Measurement: the spacelike/timelike duality + +SST distinguishes two inequivalent ways to stabilize observation, which Burgess +maps onto the Feynman (path-integral) vs. Schwinger (source) readings of +quantum theory [VERIFIED — markburgess.org/semantic_spacetime.html; +markburgess.org/spacetime.html]: + +1. **Spacelike / ensemble measurement** — *repeated trials with constant state + and semantics, in which time plays no role*; objective/frequentist. You + sample the same configuration many times and average. +2. **Timelike / "cognitive" measurement** — *continuously adapting accumulation + of state, whose semantics define change in real time*; subjective/Bayesian. + You update a running assessment as the system changes. + +The two modes can disagree because they answer different questions, and the +practitioner consequence is the skill's core measurement rule: **semantics +requires measurement** — meaning cannot be asserted before the dynamics are +measured at the right scale. Different scales yield different conclusions; a +measurement that is stable at one scale can be wrong at another. This duality +is the theory-level ground for the "dynamics always trumps semantics" lesson of +the infrastructure lineage (covered in the application reference, added in a +later milestone) and for Gotcha 4 in SKILL.md. + +## 8. Distance: metric vs semantic + +Part III defines two kinds of distance [VERIFIED — arXiv:1608.02193v4]: + +- **Metric (quantitative) distance** (Definition 8): *"a measure of + coordinate-similarity in position."* Coordinates, embeddings, positions. +- **Semantic (qualitative) distance** (Definition 9): *"a measure of similarity + in interpretation."* Worked examples in the paper: Hamming distance; hop + counts in an associative network; semantic hashing; sparse distributed + representations [VERIFIED — same source]. + +The distinction is operational: two concepts can be close in coordinates yet +far in interpretation, and vice versa. A weighted hop count over a γ(3,4) graph +is a semantic-distance instance of the hop-count family — the family this +skill's model tooling will implement for measuring drift between two snapshots +of a system's meaning. + +## 9. Learning and knowledge + +SST formalizes learning and knowledge as processes with explicit timescales +[VERIFIED — arXiv:1608.02193v4]: + +- **Learning about a promise π** (Definition 3): "the sampling, equilibration, + and summarization of observational assessments concerning a promise π made by + another agent, repeated over a timescale T_learn > 2·T_sample." The observer + applies a learning function E(α(π)_{t+1}) = L(α(π)_t, E(α(π)_t)); learning + defines a clock ticking at rate T_sample. +- **Knowledge of π** (Definition 4): "a stable summary of the iterated + assessment α(π)_{T_know}, of one or more promises π, formed by equilibration + of the samples over a timescale T_know ≫ 2·T_sample." Crucially, "because + knowledge defines a process with a timescale, the failure to confirm it + relative to other changes leads to its decay." +- **Lemma 1 (knowledge decay):** uncertainty of knowledge grows geometrically + with time since learning, with attenuation ℓ^r, ℓ < 1. +- **Lemma 2 (fidelity / learning rate):** "Learning can only represent source + values faithfully if the rate of sampling is greater than twice that of the + fastest rate of change in the data, i.e. 2/T_sample < ∂π/∂t" — the Nyquist + bound. + +Practitioner consequence: **staleness is a first-class quantity.** Memory and +retrieval designs must budget refresh; a knowledge summary that is never +re-confirmed decays geometrically no matter how accurate it was when formed. +This directly supports drift diagnosis: a stale shared interpretation is a +predictable source of semantic divergence. + +## 10. The empirical arm: the Quantitative Spacetime Hypothesis + +Two 2020 papers operationalize SST as a *testable hypothesis* rather than pure +formalism [VERIFIED — arXiv:2010.08126; arXiv:2010.08125]: + +- **arXiv:2010.08126** — *Testing the Quantitative Spacetime Hypothesis using + Artificial Narrative Comprehension (I): Bootstrapping Meaning from Episodic + Narrative viewed as a Feature Landscape.* Parses narrative streams "without + knowledge of semantics, using only measurable patterns (size and time)… as an + event 'landscape'"; concepts are extracted "as process invariants." Results + claim simple spacetime process cues, not higher reasoning, drive what is + important about sensory experience [VERIFIED — arXiv:2010.08126]. +- **arXiv:2010.08125** — *…(II): Establishing the Geometry of Invariant + Concepts, Themes, and Namespaces.* Reconstructs concepts and themes via + "multiscale interferometry" and a "chemistry of association and pattern + reconstruction, based only on the four fundamental spacetime relationships," + drawing a bioinformatic analogy (n-grams, micro/meso/macro scales) + [VERIFIED — arXiv:2010.08125]. + +Honest caveat: these are proof-of-concept experiments on narrative corpora with +single-CPU methods; the research phase found **no independent replication and no +benchmark against distributional baselines** [UNVERIFIED — no independent +replication found]. Treat the Quantitative Spacetime Hypothesis as an active, +incompletely validated empirical program — not established validation of SST. + +## 11. Spacetime-Entangled Networks: consensus as entanglement + +*Spacetime-Entangled Networks (I): Relativity and Observability of Stepwise +Consensus* is a four-author paper — Paul Borrill, Mark Burgess, Alan Karp, +Atsushi Kasuya (arXiv:1807.08549, 2018, rev. 2020) — that instantiates the +SST/promise line at the distributed-consensus layer [VERIFIED — arXiv: +1807.08549]: *"Entanglement describes co-dependent evolution of state. Networks +formed by entanglement of agents keep certain promises: they deliver sequential +messages, end-to-end, in order, and with atomic confirmation of delivery to +both ends of the link."* The "relativity of consensus" reading — observers at +different points in the network reach consensus stepwise, in their own local +order — is the SST no-global-clock doctrine applied to agreement +[VERIFIED — arXiv:1807.08549; the mapping onto the cooperative-promise +causality doctrine of §2 is this skill's synthesis and is labeled +EXTRAPOLATION]. Note this paper is not one of the seven "semantic spacetime" +phrase hits; it does not use the exact term [VERIFIED — arXiv search]. + +## 12. Motion of the Third Kind + +SST distinguishes three ways to understand motion in a graph; the third, +"virtual motion" (Motion of the Third Kind), treats processes and properties — +for example cloud workloads and data records — as *promises moving from host to +host* [VERIFIED — markburgess.org/spacetime.html]. This is the basis of +Burgess's "cloud computing as virtual physics" framing: relocating a workload +is not matter moving through space, it is a promise being re-anchored. The +ResearchGate papers *Motion of the Third Kind I & II* (2021-22) exist but their +full texts were not fetched during research; details beyond the moving-promises +framing are [UNVERIFIED]. See [glossary.md](glossary.md) for the one-line entry. + +## 13. Adjacent fields + +SST sits next to — but is distinct from — these fields. Correct attribution and +a one-line framing for each [VERIFIED — citations verified in the research +phase; see bibliography]: + +- **Cognitive maps** — Tolman, "Cognitive maps in rats and men" (1948). The + brain demonstrably organizes knowledge spatially; SST is a candidate formal + language for concept space-times, not a neuroscience claim. +- **Conceptual spaces** — Gärdenfors, *Conceptual Spaces: The Geometry of + Thought* (MIT Press, 2000). Concepts as convex regions in metric spaces with + quality dimensions; Gärdenfors-style spaces have **no time dimension** — SST + adds process and temporality. +- **Distributional / vector-space semantics** — Harris (1954), LSA (Landauer & + Dumais 1997), word2vec-style embeddings (Mikolov et al. 2013). The dominant + statistical competitor; SST explicitly contrasts itself ("graphs preserve the + intentionality of the source even under data fractionation" vs. vectorized + probabilistic estimation [VERIFIED — arXiv:2506.07756; arXiv:2512.19084]). +- **Event calculus** — Kowalski & Sergot (1986). Logic-based reasoning about + events where "the notion of event is taken to be more primitive than that of + time"; SST instead claims spacetime structure generates the semantics. +- **Situation calculus** — McCarthy & Hayes (1969). Logic-based reasoning about + actions and change; the same logic-first framing distinguishes it from SST. +- **Causal sets** — Myrheim (1978), Sorkin (2003), Surya (2019). The discrete- + spacetime program Burgess flags as the closest physics analogue: "in this + regard, a semantic spacetime is akin to causal sets" [VERIFIED — arXiv: + 2506.07756 §2]. Difference: SST's nodes are autonomous agents with semantics, + not passive points, and SST assumes no manifold structure or symmetries. +- **Logical clocks / virtual time** — Lamport (1978), Mattern (1988/89). The + distributed-systems backbone for "no global clock"; SST generalizes logical + clocks into full semantic spacetimes [VERIFIED]. + +## 14. Applying this reference + +When you have modeled a system with this vocabulary, materialize it in the +skill's model format — see [templates/sst-model.yaml.tmpl](../templates/sst-model.yaml.tmpl) +(the versioned `sst-model-v1` contract: agents, nodes, edges, acceptances, +trajectories, observations) — and write the analysis in +[templates/sst-analysis.md.tmpl](../templates/sst-analysis.md.tmpl). For +unfamiliar terms while reading, load [glossary.md](glossary.md). For the +promise-theory substrate vocabulary, load +[promise-theory](../../promise-theory/SKILL.md) — do not re-derive promises +here. For measurement and verification practice (turning assessed meaning into +evals and traces), the +[agent-evals-and-observability](../../agent-evals-and-observability/SKILL.md) +skill is the assessment-layer partner. + +## Sources + +Primary sources and adjacent works are listed with URLs in +[bibliography.md](bibliography.md). The key items cited in this file: Burgess, +*Spacetimes with Semantics* I-III (arXiv:1411.5563, 1505.01716, 1608.02193); +Burgess, *Agent Semantics, Semantic Spacetime, and Graphical Reasoning* +(arXiv:2506.07756); Burgess, *Testing the Quantitative Spacetime Hypothesis* +I-II (arXiv:2010.08126, 2010.08125); Borrill, Burgess, Karp & Kasuya, +*Spacetime-Entangled Networks (I)* (arXiv:1807.08549); Lamport, *Time, Clocks, +and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System* (CACM 1978); Burgess's +project pages (markburgess.org/spacetime.html, /semantic_spacetime.html, +/blog_spacetime3.html); Bergstra & Burgess, *Promise Theory: Principles and +Applications* (2014/2019). diff --git a/semantic-spacetime/references/glossary.md b/semantic-spacetime/references/glossary.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8b47f0f --- /dev/null +++ b/semantic-spacetime/references/glossary.md @@ -0,0 +1,230 @@ +# Glossary — Semantic Spacetime Vocabulary + +**Load this file when you hit an unfamiliar term while applying this skill** — +a word in the routing table, a reference, a model, or a diagnosis you cannot +place. Each entry is a heading-led definition consistent with +[foundations.md](foundations.md); where a term belongs to promise theory, the +entry links there and keeps its own definition short. Sources are tagged as in +[foundations.md](foundations.md): `[VERIFIED]` (confirmed in a primary source), +`[UNVERIFIED]` (secondary or inferred), `EXTRAPOLATION` (this skill's +synthesis). + +--- + +## Core semantic spacetime terms + +### Semantic element +**Semantic element** — "a tuple ⟨Aᵢ, {π_scalar j, …}⟩ consisting of a single +autonomous agent, and an optional number of scalar material promises" +[VERIFIED — arXiv:1608.02193v4 Def 1]. The atomic unit of a semantic spacetime: +an agent "surrounded by a halo of promises that imbue it with semantics." +See [foundations.md](foundations.md) §2. + +### Semantic spacetime +**Semantic spacetime (SST)** — "a collection of semantic elements, in any phase +(gas or solid), for which a local change in state, promises or configuration +represents a local unit of time" [VERIFIED — arXiv:1608.02193v4 Def 2]. Mark +Burgess's discrete graph model of meaning over time; the term is effectively his +alone (exactly 7 arXiv hits, all by him) [VERIFIED]. See +[foundations.md](foundations.md) §2. + +### Proper time +**Proper time** — time as countable local changes observed by the agent +concerned: "the Aristotelian concept of proper time as countable changes, as +observed by the agent concerned" [VERIFIED — arXiv:2506.07756 §1.3]. Each +semantic element has its own proper time; there is no global clock. See +[foundations.md](foundations.md) §2. + +### Cooperative promise causality +**Cooperative promise causality** — the SST account of causation: every +adjacency requires both an offer (+) and an acceptance (−) promise between the +two ends, so "space is made up of cooperating nodes and edges" +[VERIFIED — markburgess.org/semantic_spacetime.html]. Causality is negotiated, +local, and observable; it is never imposed. See +[foundations.md](foundations.md) §2. + +### γ(3,4) +**γ(3,4)** — the 2025 typed-graph formalism of Semantic Spacetime (Burgess, +arXiv:2506.07756): exactly three node meta-types — events (e), things (t), +concepts (c) — crossed with exactly four link types — 0 NEAR, ±1 LEADS TO, +±2 CONTAINS, ±3 EXPRESSES [VERIFIED]. Pronounced "gamma three four"; the model +format in this skill encodes it as nodes with a `type` and edges with a `link` +value in {-3..3}. See [foundations.md](foundations.md) §2. + +### NEAR +**NEAR** — γ(3,4) link value 0; symmetric; equivalence, similarity, proximity, +correlation. The "semantic symmetrization" link [VERIFIED — arXiv:2506.07756 +Table 1]. See [foundations.md](foundations.md) §2. + +### LEADS TO +**LEADS TO** — γ(3,4) link value ±1; directed; temporal/causal order — enables, +causes, precedes, depends on. The "follows" gradient link [VERIFIED — arXiv: +2506.07756 Table 1]. See [foundations.md](foundations.md) §2. + +### CONTAINS +**CONTAINS** — γ(3,4) link value ±2; directed; containment, membership, +generalization, coarse-graining. The aggregate/membership link [VERIFIED — +arXiv:2506.07756 Table 1]. See [foundations.md](foundations.md) §2. + +### EXPRESSES +**EXPRESSES** — γ(3,4) link value ±3; directed; attribute, name/value, +property, distinguishing mark. The distinguishability link [VERIFIED — arXiv: +2506.07756 Table 1]. See [foundations.md](foundations.md) §2. + +### Event +**Event** — γ(3,4) node meta-type e: temporary/ephemeral, timelike (process) +agents that persist or change via "leads to" [VERIFIED — arXiv:2506.07756 +§2.3]. A realized state of being is an event; verbs anchored to things are +events. See [foundations.md](foundations.md) §2. + +### Thing +**Thing** — γ(3,4) node meta-type t: persistent, physical/realized agents that +"behave like matter"; spacelike snapshot [VERIFIED — arXiv:2506.07756 §2.3]. +Things may be contained but not expressed. See [foundations.md](foundations.md) +§2. + +### Concept +**Concept** — γ(3,4) node meta-type c: invariant notions that cannot be created +or destroyed; the virtual space of "unrealized" potential, materialized only by +anchoring to things or events [VERIFIED — arXiv:2506.07756 §2.3]. Concepts may +be expressed but not contained. See [foundations.md](foundations.md) §2. + +### Absorbing state +**Absorbing state** — a state in a partial graph where information stops +flowing; "absorbing states are non-conserving of information" and "a graph +process leaks information" at them [VERIFIED — arXiv:2506.07756]. Burgess ties +the leak to division by zero: "loss of closure and the need for manual +injection of remedial information"; the leaking boundary is "boundary +information where intentionality can enter" [VERIFIED]. In diagnosis, a +dead-end node that accumulates meaning without propagating it. See +[foundations.md](foundations.md) §3. + +### Metric distance +**Metric (quantitative) distance** — "a measure of coordinate-similarity in +position" [VERIFIED — arXiv:1608.02193v4 Def 8]. Coordinates, embeddings, +positions. Contrast with semantic distance. See [foundations.md](foundations.md) +§8. + +### Semantic distance +**Semantic (qualitative) distance** — "a measure of similarity in +interpretation" [VERIFIED — arXiv:1608.02193v4 Def 9]; worked examples include +Hamming distance, hop counts in an associative network, semantic hashing, and +sparse distributed representations. Two concepts can be close in coordinates +yet far in interpretation. See [foundations.md](foundations.md) §8. + +### Semantic drift +**Semantic drift** — this skill's term for the divergence of shared semantic +ground over time: two agents (or an agent and its instructions) start with the +same meaning for a term and their interpretations move apart as their local +proper times advance. The diagnosis treats drift as an observable — measure the +semantic distance between the interpretations at successive observations. +**EXTRAPOLATION** — the drift concept is the skill's application of SST's +trajectory and semantic-distance machinery; the term itself is standard in the +agent-drift literature the research corpus reviewed, while the SST framing is +synthesis. + +### Trajectory +**Trajectory** — the path an agent or a concept takes through semantic +spacetime: the sequence of node states a semantic element occupies as its +proper time advances, recorded as observations. Reasoning is "constrained +spacetime trajectories" through the association network [VERIFIED — arXiv: +1608.02193 §1, §5]. In the model format, a trajectory is a declared `path` of +node ids. + +### Shared semantic ground +**Shared semantic ground** — the overlap of interpretation between two or more +agents: the set of terms and promises that both sides mean the same way, +measurable as low semantic distance between their concepts. SST models it as a +region of the semantic spacetime where NEAR/EXPRESSES edges agree across +agents. **EXTRAPOLATION** — synthesis term for this skill, grounded in the +cooperative-promise account of adjacency and the definition of semantic +distance. + +### Temporal blindness +**Temporal blindness** — an agent's failure to track event ordering, state +change, or causality — effectively lacking a proper-time record of its own +semantic element. SST's local-time account (no global clock) makes such +blindness structural unless observations are recorded; the fix is a recorded +observation log per element. The research corpus documents the LLM literature +on this ("LLMs are temporally blind," arXiv:2510.23853) [VERIFIED — citation in +the research corpus; the SST framing is EXTRAPOLATION]. + +### Spacelike measurement +**Spacelike (ensemble) measurement** — repeated trials with constant state and +semantics, in which time plays no role; objective/frequentist [VERIFIED — +markburgess.org/semantic_spacetime.html]. See [foundations.md](foundations.md) +§7. + +### Timelike measurement +**Timelike ("cognitive") measurement** — continuously adapting accumulation of +state whose semantics define change in real time; subjective/Bayesian +[VERIFIED — markburgess.org/semantic_spacetime.html]. See +[foundations.md](foundations.md) §7. + +### Learning +**Learning (about a promise π)** — "the sampling, equilibration, and +summarization of observational assessments concerning a promise π made by +another agent, repeated over a timescale T_learn > 2·T_sample" [VERIFIED — +arXiv:1608.02193v4 Def 3]. Learning defines a clock ticking at rate T_sample. +See [foundations.md](foundations.md) §9. + +### Knowledge +**Knowledge (of a promise π)** — "a stable summary of the iterated assessment +α(π)_{T_know}, of one or more promises π, formed by equilibration of the samples +over a timescale T_know ≫ 2·T_sample"; it decays geometrically without refresh +(attenuation ℓ^r, ℓ < 1) [VERIFIED — arXiv:1608.02193v4 Def 4, Lemma 1]. +Staleness is a first-class quantity. See [foundations.md](foundations.md) §9. + +### Location agent +**Location agent** — "irreducible sites that take up space and can emit and +absorb signal agents. They may not overlap" [VERIFIED — arXiv:1608.02193v4 +Def 6]. See [foundations.md](foundations.md) §2. + +### Signal agent +**Signal agent** — agents that "may be created and destroyed, subsequently +emitted and absorbed, by location agents. They can occupy the same space, since +they end up and accumulate at end points" [VERIFIED — arXiv:1608.02193v4 +Def 7]. See [foundations.md](foundations.md) §2. + +### Super-agent +**Super-agent** — the coarse-grained agent formed by scaling agency up via the +Part II rules: replacing a group of individual agents with one "super-agent" +(sub-space), scaling agency both dynamically and semantically [VERIFIED — arXiv: +1505.01716]. The renormalization analogue; see +[foundations.md](foundations.md) §1 for the series map. + +### Motion of the Third Kind +**Motion of the Third Kind** — "virtual motion": processes and properties (e.g., +cloud workloads, data records) treated as promises moving from host to host, +the basis of Burgess's "cloud computing as virtual physics" framing [VERIFIED — +markburgess.org/spacetime.html]. The ResearchGate papers of that name (2021-22) +exist; their details are [UNVERIFIED]. See [foundations.md](foundations.md) §12. + +## Promise-theory-owned terms (deferred) + +### Promise +**Promise** — an autonomous declaration of intended, as yet unverified, +behavior made by one agent to another; the primitive every SST adjacency builds +on (offer polarity +π). Full definition, notation, and body/type/constraint +machinery live in [promise-theory](../../promise-theory/SKILL.md) — load it +there rather than re-deriving it. See [foundations.md](foundations.md) §6. + +### Acceptance +**Acceptance** — the complementary counter-promise (−π) that turns an offer +into a binding: influence passes only through the overlap of offer and +acceptance. SST's cooperative-promise causality is built from it. Full +treatment: [promise-theory](../../promise-theory/SKILL.md). See +[foundations.md](foundations.md) §2 and §6. + +### Convergence +**Convergence** — repeated local assessment toward a desired state (a fixed +point), the dynamic meaning of "convergent coordination" in SST; statistical, +never exact. Full treatment (including the distinction from idempotence): +[promise-theory](../../promise-theory/SKILL.md) and its applications reference. +See [foundations.md](foundations.md) §6. + +### Downstream Principle +**Downstream Principle** — the most downstream party in a promise chain carries +the greatest causal responsibility for the outcome. Promise-theory-owned; +[promise-theory](../../promise-theory/SKILL.md) has the full statement. See +[foundations.md](foundations.md) §6. diff --git a/semantic-spacetime/templates/sst-analysis.md.tmpl b/semantic-spacetime/templates/sst-analysis.md.tmpl new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0bddc79 --- /dev/null +++ b/semantic-spacetime/templates/sst-analysis.md.tmpl @@ -0,0 +1,86 @@ +# Semantic Spacetime Analysis: + +Semantic Spacetime analysis report. Fill this skeleton from a completed model +in [sst-model.yaml.tmpl](sst-model.yaml.tmpl) (the versioned `sst-model-v1` +format). Every section below corresponds to a construct defined in that model +— agents, nodes, edges, acceptances, trajectories, observations — so the +report and the model stay in sync; do not invent new fields. + +- Analysis version: <0.1.0> +- Status: +- Date: +- Model version analyzed: +- Analyst: + +## 1. System description + +Describe the system being modeled in plain language: who the agents are (their +ids and roles from the model's `agents`), what the semantic spacetime covers, +and the question the analysis answers (e.g., "why did the two agents' +interpretations diverge?"). + +- Agents: +- Scope of the spacetime: +- Analysis question: + +## 2. Semantic spacetime map + +Summarize the model's graph as built in `sst-model.yaml.tmpl`: + +- Nodes: +- Edges: to, with the + link meaning 0 = NEAR, +/-1 = LEADS TO, +/-2 = CONTAINS, +/-3 = EXPRESSES> +- Acceptances: accepting agent pairs from the model's `acceptances`> +- Trajectories: +- Observations: + +## 3. Findings: drift, divergence, absorbing states + +List each finding with the evidence that grounds it (which nodes, edges, +trajectories, or observations support it): + +### Finding — +- Observation: +- Interpretation: +- Absorbing-state / information-leak check: + +### Finding — +- Observation: <...> +- Interpretation: <...> +- Absorbing-state / information-leak check: <...> + +## 4. Interventions + +For each finding, propose a concrete change to the model (and, if applicable, +to the system it models): + +- intervention: +- intervention: + +## 5. Verification / measurement plan + +State how each intervention will be measured, using the model's own record +machinery: + +- What to observe: +- Measurement mode: +- Success criterion: +- Refresh budget: + +## 6. Exit + +This analysis is complete when the system is modeled as a semantic spacetime, +findings are recorded with evidence, and the verification plan is stated. +When diagnosing drift: stop after three non-converging passes and report the +evidence. diff --git a/semantic-spacetime/templates/sst-model.yaml.tmpl b/semantic-spacetime/templates/sst-model.yaml.tmpl new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2b152d2 --- /dev/null +++ b/semantic-spacetime/templates/sst-model.yaml.tmpl @@ -0,0 +1,102 @@ +# sst-model-v1 +# +# Semantic Spacetime model format. A model is a versioned, machine-readable +# description of a system as a semantic spacetime: autonomous agents with +# scalar promises, typed semantic nodes (events / things / concepts), typed +# gamma(3,4) edges, cross-agent acceptances, declared trajectories, and an +# observation log (the proper-time record). +# +# FILLING GUIDE +# ------------- +# Copy this template to a working file (e.g. sst-model.yaml) and replace the +# example values with your own, keeping the structure. Every field below is +# documented inline and in this guide. The block between the markers +# '# --- example ---' and '# --- end example ---' is a complete, valid model: +# imitate it. A filled model must satisfy every rule listed here; a later +# milestone ships a linter that reports violations by name. +# +# TOP-LEVEL FIELDS +# ---------------- +# schema_version REQUIRED. Must be the integer 1. Bump only when the format +# changes; the format is a versioned contract. +# agents REQUIRED. List of autonomous agents that make promises. +# nodes REQUIRED. List of semantic elements of the spacetime graph, +# typed as event, thing, or concept. +# edges REQUIRED. List of gamma(3,4) edges between nodes. +# acceptances OPTIONAL. List of cross-agent acceptance records tying a +# promise to the agent that accepted it. +# trajectories OPTIONAL. List of declared paths through the node graph. +# observations OPTIONAL. List of proper-time records: what changed, and when. +# +# RULES (the linter will enforce these) +# ------------------------------------- +# * schema_version must be 1 (integer, not a string). +# * agent ids are unique and lowercase-hyphen (^[a-z0-9]+(?:-[a-z0-9]+)*$); +# "all" is a reserved target token and cannot be an agent id. +# * promise ids are unique across the WHOLE model (agents and acceptances). +# * node ids are unique and lowercase-hyphen. +# * node type is exactly one of: event | thing | concept. +# * edge from/to must reference existing node ids; edge link must be an +# integer in -3..3 inclusive (0 = NEAR, +/-1 = LEADS TO, +/-2 = CONTAINS, +# +/-3 = EXPRESSES). +# * acceptance.promise must reference a declared promise id, and +# acceptance.from must equal the agent that declares that promise. +# * trajectory path entries must reference existing node ids; a path has at +# least one entry. +# * observation.changed, when present, must reference a declared node id or +# promise id. + +# --- example --- +schema_version: 1 +agents: + - id: operator # required; unique; lowercase-hyphen + role: workflow operator # required; free text + promises: # optional; scalar promises this agent makes + - id: deliver-report # required; unique across the whole model + body: Deliver the weekly status report by Friday. # required; free text + type: capability # optional; capability | intent | constraint + target: reviewer # optional; | | all + - id: no-unverified-claims + body: Never assert a claim without a measured source. + type: constraint + target: all + - id: reviewer + role: semantic reviewer + promises: + - id: review-report + body: Review the report for semantic drift against the agreed vocabulary. + type: capability + target: operator +nodes: # required; at least one semantic element + - id: report-event # required; unique; lowercase-hyphen + type: event # required; event | thing | concept + - id: report-thing + type: thing + - id: drift-concept + type: concept +edges: # required; at least one gamma(3,4) edge + - from: report-event # required; must be a declared node id + to: report-thing # required; must be a declared node id + link: 1 # required; integer in -3..3 + - from: report-thing + to: drift-concept + link: 3 + - from: drift-concept + to: report-thing + link: 2 +acceptances: # optional; cross-agent acceptance records + - promise: deliver-report # required; must reference a declared promise id + from: operator # required; must equal the agent that declares it + to: reviewer # required; a declared agent id +trajectories: # optional; declared paths through the graph + - id: report-flow # required; unique + path: [report-event, report-thing, drift-concept] # required; node ids, >= 1 entry + label: report moves from event to reviewed thing # optional; free text +observations: # optional; the proper-time record + - at: t1 # required; tick label or timestamp, free text + event: report drafted # required; what changed, free text + changed: report-event # optional; a declared node id or promise id + - at: t2 + event: reviewer flags drift in vocabulary + changed: drift-concept +# --- end example ---