{
  "handle": "StrategicIntermediateState",
  "gloss": "Occupy a position that lowers the cost of moving to many valuable states, rather than one that is best for any single state",
  "mechanism": "Some states are valuable less for what they deliver themselves than for how cheaply other valuable states can be reached from them: the café between home and park, the centre of a squash court from which any shot can be reached, the PicBreeder images that many users bred into very different pictures (a skull closely related to a car), robust phenotypes from which many viable variants are a small step away. Holding such a position raises the {{information_dividend}}, because changing shape to follow new information becomes cheaper. It looks like hedging but differs: a hedge is a static split across positions, while an intermediate state is a single position kept for dynamic movement. Its value shows in the variety of later shapes it makes affordable, so it supports {{information_growth}} and innovation, even if it pays less than the best specialist state at any one moment.",
  "invariants": [
    "The state is valued for the transitions it makes cheap, not for its own payoff alone",
    "It is a single dynamic position, not a static allocation across positions",
    "Its value grows with the variety and value of the states reachable from it"
  ],
  "failure_modes": [
    "Mistaking it for a hedge and evaluating it as a static portfolio",
    "Abandoning it for the locally best state and losing cheap access to others",
    "Judging it only by its immediate payoff"
  ],
  "_meta": {
    "path": [
      "Mind",
      "Strategy"
    ],
    "ring": 2,
    "tier": 2,
    "source": "Adam Timlett, On the Origin of Risk (2025), Ch 5 p.51-54; PicBreeder: Kenneth Stanley and Joel Lehman, Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned (2015)"
  },
  "sema_id": "sema:StrategicIntermediateState#mh:SHA-256:b8ce9d180be004cb16f1fdaee47810d11a4d33fb94c7a831befc5a2e1df04a62",
  "sema_ref": "StrategicIntermediateState#b8ce",
  "sema_stub": "b8ce",
  "dependencies": {
    "references": {
      "information_dividend": "sema:InformationDividend#mh:SHA-256:80a31b65e2e233ba0230d8a6477e43b1d8308ae8a020e5135f1665602ec79280",
      "information_growth": "sema:InformationGrowth#mh:SHA-256:9a86182b8561d0eada5a28b0ceb30fa00500e725d050f760805b8f0da37125de"
    }
  },
  "sema_layer": "Mind",
  "sema_category": "Strategy",
  "used_by": {}
}