assembly-economics/concepts/Glossary.md

Glossary — Shared Vocabulary v0.1

The two lenses describe the same assembly logic at different scales and often use different words for related ideas. Each entry gives the project's preferred term, what each lens means by it, and a recommendation.

Recommendations are proposals. Adopt them when the concept documents are next revised.

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Terms used differently

Assembly ↔ Chunk / Concept formation

• GAS: an assembly is a coherent structure formed from existing components that can itself become a component in future structures.
• AIPN: a chunk is a higher-order entity summarizing a recurring structure, and chunks may participate as ordinary nodes. Structural formation goes up to hierarchical concept formation.
• Relation: a chunk is an assembly inside an organism. The "becomes a component" clause is the same in both.
• Recommendation: keep chunk for the internal AIPN mechanism. Use assembly in every cross-lens or societal statement, and state in the AIPN concept that chunks are assemblies at the organism scale.

Generativity ↔ Developmental potential

• GAS: generativity is the capacity of an assembly to enable further viable assemblies.
• Organism lens (history): breeding should "optimize developmental potential": select seeds for how well they grow, not for what they can already do.
• Relation: developmental potential is generativity applied to a single organism's future.
• Recommendation: use generativity as the general term. Use developmental potential only for seed kernels.

Viability (VFAS) ↔ Viability variable

• GAS: viable future assembly space is the set of futures realistically constructible under constraints.
• AIPN: a viability variable is a condition to keep within an acceptable range (QueueDepth, OperatorLoad), and viability precedes optimization.
• Relation: both mean "remains within a livable range", not "maximized". GADM's normalized stocks with floors are viability variables at the societal scale.
• Recommendation: treat GADM stock floors explicitly as viability variables in GADM-0.2. This makes "viability precedes optimization" a shared modeling rule.

Selection ↔ Observer / Fitness / Signal

• GAS/GADM: selection via markets, science, community and public purpose (\sigma), never consumer adoption alone.
• AIPN: observers evaluate episodes and emit multi-dimensional signals. In the evolution layer, fitness is multi-dimensional and measured in environments, not benchmarks.
• Relation: an observer is a selection mechanism at organism scale. Both lenses reject single-scalar evaluation (GAS: sensor bundles; AIPN: success is not a single scalar).
• Recommendation: use selection for the process and observer for the entity performing it. Avoid bare fitness in societal contexts, because it imports a single-score connotation the project rejects.

Effective agency ↔ Action / Goal

• GAS: effective agency is the diversity and accessibility of materially reachable futures of a person or group.
• AIPN: an action is an intervention by the network. Its states (possible, permitted, recommended, selected, executed, mandatory) must not be conflated. A goal is a modeled desired tendency.
• Relation: the AIPN action states are a fine-grained vocabulary for reachable futures. Possible but not permitted is exactly the gap that domination opens.
• Recommendation: reserve agency for humans and groups. Organisms have action repertoires, not agency, consistent with "learning is distinct from authority".

Commons / Reuse ↔ Inheritance / Distribution

• GAS: the assembly commons holds reusable knowledge, standards, tools, infrastructure and institutions. Preserve and reuse are steps of the cycle.
• Organism lens: inheritance of learned structure (including failures) and distributions of pre-evolved organisms, comparable to software distributions.
• Relation: an openly inheritable lineage is part of the assembly commons. A closed one is enclosure.
• Recommendation: describe lineages as commons or enclosed, using GADM's I_X / L_X distinction.

Domination ↔ Membrane control

• GAS: domination is concentrated ability to constrain others' reachable futures.
• Organism lens: the membrane is the primary control interface. Whoever configures it shapes what the organism does.
• Relation: membrane control is a specific channel of domination.
• Recommendation: name membrane control as a domination channel in the society concept (see models/InformationOrganismsInGADM.md § 3.5).

Disassemble ↔ Forgetting

• GAS: disassembly and reassembly are as important as creation.
• AIPN: forgetting and plasticity let structure dissolve and reform.
• Recommendation: forgetting is disassembly at organism scale. Use disassembly in cross-lens statements.

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Terms that belong to one lens only

Term	Lens	Note
Node, Edge, Token, Activation, Episode, Eligibility Trace	AIPN	Mechanism-level; no societal counterpart needed
Membrane, Metabolism, Substrate, Seed Kernel	organism	Candidates for societal analogues (institutions as membranes); not yet adopted
Right to Assemble, Societal Contract, Care, Plurality	GAS	Normative; no organism counterpart
VFAC	GADM	Diagnostic instrument; not a welfare function

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Terms the project avoids

Avoid	Use instead	Why
canon	concepts, models	"Canon" is reserved for an established body of knowledge. This project is exploratory.
workstream (for hub records)	workplan	In the State Hub, "workstream" is the legacy name for a workplan. INTENT.md's WS-xx research workstreams are research areas, not hub records.
fitness (societal)	selection quality	Avoids single-score connotations.
agency (for organisms)	action repertoire	Keeps authority and agency with humans.