Mind · Strategy
FractionalMetaModel
An implementation that is at once one working model and a partial implementation of several others, so that some functions can be completed or removed with a small change
Definition
Mechanism
Most implementations with more than one component sit halfway between models. Some functions are complete; others are partly built: a memorable password that fails one strength rule, a data column brought through two of three pipeline stages, a call I thought about making but did not. These partly built functions are ProximateOptions: if 6 of 7 components are in place, changing 1 completes the function. Unlike a hierarchical meta-model one level up, which loses domain information, a fractional meta-model sits at the same level as the solution and keeps it. The partial functions show up as friction, a raised ComputationalEntropyRate. When an ExogenousStress arrives that needs one of them, little work is needed to complete it; if the stressor never comes, the partial function can be removed. Organisations whose members hold different views of what to do are fractional meta-models of this kind, and the same structure gives MetaModularity a concrete mechanism.
Invariants
- The model is at the same level as the solution, not a level of abstraction above it
- Completing a partly built function needs only the missing components
- Partly built functions appear as friction in the system's channels
Risks
Failure modes
Defining meta-models only as data hierarchies, which lose the domain
Streamlining away every partly built function as waste
Leaving partly built functions that will never be needed, at a standing cost
Relationships
Builds on
References
Infrastructure
Bits submitted per bit accepted in a channel that computes, where rejection is meaningful work rather than noise
Physics
An external event or change in requirements that the current shape does not handle and that forces it to change
A body plan that holds many overlapping but non-identical models of the same problem, ready to instantiate whichever fits
Inputs that are generated but currently rejected are cheap, latent options sitting in the gap between the generator's and the acceptor's languages
Used by
References
The internal load a system carries from being partly prepared for possible external stressors
Society
Pre-position part of a possible future configuration so that, when the game changes, most agents already fit the new optimum and only the remaining fraction must change strategy
Stop integrating stressor handling into a design once it survives a fresh round of unseen simulated stressors, or once further integration costs more than it buys; tested by experiment, not proven from a probability distribution