Physics · Primitives
Conservation
An invariant quantity preserved under a closed system's transformations — a substrate law
Definition
Mechanism
An invariant quantity preserved under the transformations of a closed system — no process within the system creates or destroys the conserved quantity; transformations only redistribute it. Substrate law: energy is conserved in closed physical systems; probability mass is conserved in stochastic systems; in coordination contexts, a token supply or attention budget that is conserved cannot be counterfeited mid-process. The boundary matters: conservation is defined relative to a closure; crossing the boundary violates the invariant within the enclosed system. Conservation is distinct from an authored budget constraint: budgets are engineered ceilings on consumption, while conservation is the substrate property that the sum-over-the-closed-system is invariant under the system's own dynamics.
Invariants
- Invariance: the conserved quantity's total value is unchanged by any transformation confined to the system.
- Closure scope: conservation is defined relative to a boundary; the invariant holds strictly within the enclosed system, not across the boundary.
- Redistribution only: transformations can move the quantity between parts of the system, never create or destroy it.
Risks
Failure modes
None stated.
Relationships
Root pattern: builds on nothing in this library.
Used by
References
Infrastructure
Resource allocation limit
Infrastructure
Check that a conserved quantity balances over every holder, as an equality, not as a lower bound on the holders being watched
Mind
Expansion of cognitive capability through recursive decomposition of concepts into contract-bounded sub-concepts
Society
Emergent working groups from activity density
Mind
Restructuring categories to fit data
Infrastructure
Deterministic partitioning of state
Reference