Foundations

The v0.1 anchor. Captures the conceptual state of the theory at the close of the first dialogue. Subsequent revisions live in later documents; this one is the baseline.

0. Thesis

Everything that exists is made of one substance — interaction — and can be explained by one phenomenon: the interaction script.

Reality is not made of things that occasionally interact. It is made of interactions, and "things" (agents, Forms, objects, selves) are derivative — they are stable patterns within the interaction substrate.

This is a single-primitive ontology. The remainder of the theory is the structural unfolding of what an interaction is and what follows from taking it as the only real thing.

1. The Interaction (the atom of reality)

An interaction is an atomic structure consisting of six items:

1. Pole A — the mark-leaver.
2. Pole B — the aware one.
3. Local space — intrinsic to this interaction. Not borrowed from any backdrop.
4. Local time — intrinsic to this interaction. Zero-duration from outside, full internal duration from inside.
5. Mark — the informational content delivered from A to B.
6. Protocol — the internal process by which the mark is computed and propagated. (See §3.)

The script

Inside every interaction, the same script runs:

Agent A leaves a Mark upon the local space; after some local time, Agent B becomes aware of the Mark.

Until B becomes aware, the interaction does not exist. There is no mark in limbo, no half-event waiting to be completed. The whole 6-tuple — A, B, local space, local time, mark, protocol — comes into being only at the moment of awareness.

Awareness, not detection

The receiving pole's act is called awareness, not detection. "Detection" would imply that B interacts with the mark, which would launch an infinite regress (every detection would itself be an interaction needing its own detection). Awareness is primitive and non-interactional. It is constitutive of the interaction, not antecedent to it.

Time is encapsulated

There is no external time. From the outside (if such a view existed), every interaction is a zero-duration atomic event. Time exists only inside an interaction, as the duration between A's mark-leaving and B's awareness — and only relative to that interaction's interior.

Two poles, exactly

Every interaction has exactly two poles. This is currently taken as axiomatic; a deeper justification is owed (see §11).

2. Agents

Agents do not exist as a separate primitive. They are derivative.

• Retrospectively, an agent is a bundle / sum of pole-positions across many interactions.
• Prospectively, an agent is a potential for further interactions.
• Intrinsically, the two-pole structure is a feature of each interaction, not a sign of two free-standing things existing prior to it.

Agent identity (across interactions)

Two pole-positions belong to the same agent iff there is one awareness that ties them together. Identity is not a brute primitive label; it is structural — given by shared awareness threading through multiple interactions.

Two interactions belong to the same agent iff that agent is aware of both of them.

Self-action

An agent (Form) acts on itself. Self-maintenance at level n is realized as a coordinated pattern of inter-component interactions at level n−1. The cell maintains itself because its organelles inter-act; organelles because their molecules do; molecules because their atoms do; atoms because their constituent Mass-interactions do.

3. Protocol

A Protocol is the internal process of an interaction. The HOW.

• For a non-Mass interaction, the protocol is the subtree of sub-interactions that unfold inside its local spacetime, computing the mark.
• The mark is the final computation of the sub-interactions' marks (the rule of computation, §6, is still open).
• A protocol is not a Form. It is processual; Forms are substantial.

Examples

• Two protons exchanging charge: the protocol of a proton–proton interaction.
• The chain neuron→vocal cord→air→ear→neuron when one human speaks to another: the protocol of a human-to-human interaction.
• The whole of cosmic history: the protocol of the One Interaction (§5).

Physics, redefined

Physics is the science of protocols. Each discipline reverse-engineers the internal process of some class of interactions: electromagnetism = proton-proton protocol; neuroscience = neuron-neuron protocol; cosmology = the protocol of the One Interaction.

4. Mass

Mass is the atomic, leaf-level interaction. It is the origin of all interactions in the sense that every chain of nesting terminates downward in a Mass-interaction. All higher interactions are structured compositions of Mass.

• Mass-interactions have no sub-interactions (no protocol below them).
• Their mark is primitive — a non-decomposable unit of information. It is the simplest fact of distinction: that which separates what is in existence from what is not.
• Mass is the substance out of which all higher structure is built.

This deliberately resonates with the physical concept of mass: that which has substance, weight, irreducible presence.

5. The One Interaction (the universe)

The universe is one interaction. It is the root of the tree of interactions.

• The Big Bang is the moment of A's mark-leaving.
• The end of the universe (whenever and however it happens) is B's becoming-aware.
• All of cosmic history is the internal time and protocol of this single interaction.
• All space, time, and mass we observe were "introduced at the Big Bang" — meaning they came into being as the interior of the One Interaction.

From outside (a view we do not have), the universe is a zero-duration event. From inside (the only view we have), it is everything we can observe.

This makes a serious metaphysical commitment: the mark of the One Interaction is forever hidden from us. We are inside the protocol; we cannot see the mark or the awareness that will receive it.

6. The structure: a rooted tree

The set of all interactions forms a rooted tree:

• Each interaction has exactly one parent — the interaction whose protocol it is part of.
• An interaction's local spacetime is nested inside its parent's local spacetime: χ(n) ⊆ χ(π(n)).
• The root is the One Interaction.
• The leaves are Mass-interactions.

There is no shared, universal spacetime. The reason our physics has a spacetime to work with is that everything we can observe is nested inside one common ancestor — the One Interaction — and we live in its interior. Two interactions have a spatial or temporal relation to each other only via a common ancestor's interior.

Sensed time is composite

We are sub-Forms of many parent interactions at once (human-level, cellular, molecular, atomic, ultimately the One). Each parent has its own local time. Our sensed time is a synthesis / weighted combination of all of them. This explains:

• Multiscale time-feel (immediate present + flowing context).
• Subjective time dilation (re-weighting under flow, fear, boredom).
• Why time can feel continuous despite no universal time existing.

7. Form

A Form is the manifestation of a stabilized Protocol.

• A Form is an agent at some level above Mass.
• It is a bundle of pole-positions (recurring agent across many interactions) that is actively self-maintained through autopoiesis: its sub-Forms' interactions reproduce the conditions of its own existence.
• Decay is automatic; existence is active. To be a Form is to be doing the work of being a Form.

Solidification and Crystallization

• Solidification — when a Form's autopoietic loop becomes self-reinforcing enough to resist the dissolution-tendency of the substrate. The Form becomes a stable attractor.
• Crystallization — when many alike solidified Forms begin interacting with each other along a regular pattern (a protocol of inter-Form interactions). Through that protocol, the Forms operate as agents of a higher level. Note: the protocol does not become an agent; it is the structure of the new interactions, and the participating Forms are thereby promoted.

Alikeness (between Forms)

Two Forms are alike iff they can serve as poles in the same kind of protocol. Alikeness = protocol-compatibility. (Two protons are alike because they engage in proton-proton protocols; two humans are alike because they engage in human-to-human protocols.)

This is a functional definition, not a structural one. Two Forms can be alike at one level and radically different at another.

8. Action

An Action is the manifestation of a Form, just as a Form is the manifestation of a Protocol.

The four-tier hierarchy of manifestation:

• Interaction is the only substance.
• Protocol is the internal process of an interaction.
• Form is the manifestation of a stabilized protocol — what shows up at the agent-level.
• Action is the manifestation of a Form — what the Form does outwardly.

Action as filter on interaction-potential

Actions are a filter over the interaction potential.

The substrate (the "abyss of randomness") is the space of potential interactions. Without filtering, this potential diffuses toward maximum disorder. A Form's actions filter this potential — biasing which interactions occur, privileging some patterns over others, in ways that reproduce the Form.

The feedback loop

Action and Interaction move in opposite directions:

• Action flows outward from a Form into the interaction-potential.
• Interaction flows inward into agents as awareness.

Their interplay is the engine of existence:

A Form persists iff this loop closes on itself — its actions filter the potential in just the way needed to produce the very interactions whose protocol re-manifests the Form.

This is autopoiesis generalized to all of reality.

9. The two opposing tendencies

Every Form lives in the balance between two real tendencies built into the substrate:

1. Decay — disorder, data loss, dissolution. The default. Marks degrade, patterns dissipate, Forms collapse if not actively sustained.
2. Emergence — patterns spontaneously crystallize from large numbers of chaotic interactions. Order rises by itself when interaction-density is high enough.

A Form is a local stable balance between these two: its autopoietic loop generates new structure (emergence) faster than dissolution erodes it (decay).

A first-pass dynamic equation:

where:

• Φ = Form-strength (some measure of how solidified the pattern is)
• ρ_int = local interaction-density
• E = emergence rate (increasing in ρ_int and in Φ — autocatalytic)
• D = decay rate (increasing in Φ)
• τ = local internal time of the parent interaction we're nested in

Forms exist at stable fixed points where E = D. Solidification = entering such a basin. Crystallization = many alike fixed points coupling and producing a higher-level fixed point. Death/dissolution = trajectory escaping the basin.

Formalizing this balance is the central mathematical task of the theory.

10. Existence criteria

The theory has two complementary criteria of existence, at two levels:

Descartes had cogito ergo sum — thinking as the criterion of self-existence. The Interaction Theory's parallel is ago ergo sum — I act, therefore I am. Stop acting, and the Form dissolves back into the abyss of potential.

11. Open questions / next directions

The skeleton above is conceptually complete enough to begin formalizing. The following are the live mathematical/conceptual questions:

1. The primitive mark alphabet M₀. What does a Mass-interaction's mark consist of? One bit? A two-valued tag? A complex unit vector? An element of some algebra? The choice determines whether the theory is classical-informational, quantum-like, or continuous.
2. The mark-computation rule φ. How do children's marks aggregate into the parent's mark? (Sum across same-level agents, multiplication across levels was suggested.) If multiplication is tensor-product, the theory is quantum-flavored. If it is ordinary product, classical-probabilistic.
3. The geometry of nested local spacetimes. Is χ(n) a point, a region, an interval inside χ(π(n))? Does the packing have constraints (no-overlap, ordering)? This determines whether the theory reproduces Lorentzian-like causal structure.
4. Why exactly two poles? Currently axiomatic. Candidate justifications: information requires sender + receiver; awareness is intrinsically dyadic; or it is simply postulated and the theory's job is to reproduce 2-polar phenomenology. A derivation would be stronger than a stipulation.
5. The top of the tree. Confirmed: the One Interaction is the root. Open: what supplies its spacetime? Is its interior self-supplied? Is it parent-less by exception?
6. Formalizing the decay/emergence balance. Specify E, D, ρ_int, Φ as concrete mathematical objects. Master equation? Stochastic process? Field theory on the tree?
7. The interaction-potential as a mathematical object. Distribution, measure, possibility-space? What does "filtering" do to it formally?
8. Cross-references with established frameworks — the theory has natural cousins worth tracing: Whitehead's actual occasions, Rovelli's relational QM, Sorkin's causal sets, Wheeler's "it from bit," Maturana–Varela's autopoiesis, Prigogine's dissipative structures, Peirce's semiotics. Each contributes a piece of the formal vocabulary the theory will need.

End of v0.1 anchor. Continues in Epistemic Asymmetry (v0.2).