Hello — I’ve just published a preprint exploring a new meta-theoretical framework I call the Gödelian Constraint on Epistemic Freedom (GCEF).
It is a meta-theoretical framework that proposes a general constraint on embedded cognition:
- No agent embedded within a generative system can construct a complete model of that system.
- Embedded agents are structurally required to hallucinate coherence closure, freedom of choice, and statistical independence in order to be adaptive.
This idea synthesizes insights from Gödel, Turing, Lawvere, and Wolpert, then applies them across domains: foundations of mathematics, quantum mechanics, cognition, ethics, governance, AGI alignment, and civilizational resilience.
It identifies a class of problems — E-class problems — which resist resolution not because they are hard, but because their resolution demands global structure inaccessible to any local, embedded modeler.
Topics covered in the paper:
- Formal Core: GCEF as a topological constraint on model spaces
- E-Class Taxonomy: Candidate epistemically occluded problems across logic, math, complexity, and physics
- Integration with Philosophy: Kant, Heidegger, Zizek, Nietzsche, Foucault
- Speculative Applications:
- Thermodynamics and epistemic entropy
- Cognitive collapse under recursion
- Ethics as coherence management
- AGI alignment as simulation regulation
- Governance, symbolic drift, and climate failure
Why post here?
This work directly touches on key themes discussed on LW: epistemology, simulation, alignment, rationality limits, and collapse modes under recursive constraint. I’m particularly interested in:
- Pushback on core assumptions
- Critique of formal structure
- Suggestions for additional domains
- Connections to existing work on simulacra, bounded rationality, or AGI safety
Looking forward to your thoughts. Especially if they’re brutal, clever, or deeply weird.
— A