Infrastructure · Primitives
CryptographicChange
Using the room a prediction frees up in a process, either to return visible savings or to run extra functions that the process's outputs do not reveal
Definition
Mechanism
A ProductivePredictionMachine shows that a reliable prediction about inputs frees up room in a process: states it no longer needs, inputs it can skip. That room can be used in different ways, which differ in what an observer of the process's inputs, outputs and costs can detect. Returned as savings, the change is visible as greater efficiency with unchanged function (quasi-cryptographic). Filled with an additional process interleaved with the main one, at no extra cost, the change is invisible to whoever budgets and checks the main function (partially cryptographic). A parasitic function can also ride on the host process without any prediction, occupying the same states and paying only in time delay (fully cryptographic), like a message encoded as word positions in a book that someone appears simply to be reading. Attention is a natural example, which is why an organism's real inputs can be hard to read from its behaviour.
Invariants
- The host process's specified inputs and outputs are unchanged
- The variants differ in whether the change is visible to the process's budget holder or output checks
- Hidden functions need enough variety in the host process to draw on
Risks
Failure modes
Measuring a process only by its main output and missing the value, or harm, of hidden functions
Over-streamlining tasks so there is no room or variety left for additional functions
Exploiting a prediction that later fails, with no capacity to notice
Caution
Hidden functions run outside the view of whoever budgets and checks a process, so in organisations they can also escape legitimate oversight.
Relationships
Builds on
References
A machine simplified by a prediction about its inputs, so that it does the same work with less, for as long as the prediction holds
Used by
References
A parasitic function that rides on a host process, occupying the same states without needing any prediction, and paying only in delay
Mind
Fill the room a prediction frees up with an extra process interleaved with the main one, so a second function runs at no visible cost
Hand back the room a prediction frees up as visible efficiency savings: same function, measurably cheaper, nothing hidden