Mind · Strategy
StrategicIntermediateState
Occupy a position that lowers the cost of moving to many valuable states, rather than one that is best for any single state
Definition
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 InformationDividend, 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 InformationGrowth 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
Risks
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
Relationships
Builds on
References
The payoff from changing shape to exploit reliable short-term information, which exists even when the long-range forecast is entirely correct
Adding new information that has value in its own right, even when exploiting it deforms or abandons the current shape
Nothing in this library builds on this pattern yet.