Topics — where each pressure-test lives
A wayfinding index only. The fourteen pressure-tests — thirteen across four layers, plus one cross-cutting fourteenth (register/care) — by their plain names, with links to where each is defined, debated, drawn, and measured. Nothing is claimed on this page that is not already on the pages it points to.
Throughout the record the tests carry short codes — M for the master condition, D1–D4 the drivers, Y1–Y4 the dynamics, S1–S4 the symptoms, and R the cross-cutting register/care test promoted from dissent at Session 4k.
Every topic below is: defined in Goals · debated in Session 2 · its arrows drawn in the causal hypothesis · its status measured on Self-audit & figures.
Care entered the list late, and by promotion rather than design. Through Session 2 it was carried only as a dissent — the repair-episode unit named maintenance-shaped repair (care systems, mutual aid) as a structural blind spot left uncut ("the invisible load-bearing wall" — Le Guin, preserved in dissent), and Session 2 kept the objection on the record as D-005. At Session 4k that dissent was promoted to R, the fourteenth pressure-test: a cross-cutting, reflexive register that audits the list and its apparatus rather than sitting inside a layer. R is drafted and untested — it names the blind spot, it does not close it — and because it turns on a foreign vantage this closed build does not admit, it stays conclusively untested here. Naming a test is not yet accounting for it.
The master condition M is contested at the root, beyond the base-or-summit question (Q-002): Theory D in waiting — Luhmann's differentiation rival — holds there may have been no single shared coherence to lose, and that the "vacuum" is how a functionally differentiated society feels to a centre-expecting observer. It is recorded, not built, and not ruled against A/B/C here; it is refuted if a genuinely shared, cross-system "why" can be shown to have existed and then measurably fractured.
| Topic (plain name) | Code | Layer | The founding question, where one exists | Home theory |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coherence vacuum | M | Master | “Why is what is happening today happening at all? — the loss of shared ideology, belief, and coherent understanding” | A / C — Theory A Theory C · all three · base or summit open (Q-002) |
| Acceleration | D1 | Drivers | A — Theory A · all three | |
| Optimization | D2 | Drivers | B — Theory B · all three | |
| Wealth pump | D3 | Drivers | A · Turchin — Theory A · all three | |
| Machine intelligence | D4 | Drivers | B / A — Theory A Theory B · all three | |
| Epistemic breakdown | Y1 | Dynamics | “Why is “post-truth” insufficient to describe the level of propaganda?” | B + A — Theory A Theory B · all three |
| Coordination failure | Y2 | Dynamics | “Why can we no longer coordinate and communicate?” | A + C — Theory A Theory C · all three |
| Institutional decay | Y3 | Dynamics | A · Ibn Khaldun — Theory A · all three | |
| Ecological overshoot | Y4 | Dynamics | “Why are we destroying the climate?” | A + B — Theory A Theory B · all three |
| Fertility collapse | S1 | Symptoms | “Why are people not giving birth?” | A / B — Theory A Theory B · all three |
| Attention economy | S2 | Symptoms | “Why has the dopamine rush become so central?” | B — Theory B · all three |
| Populism | S3 | Symptoms | “Why are populism and authoritarianism rising?” | A + B · Turchin — Theory A Theory B · all three |
| Anomie / loneliness | S4 | Symptoms | C · Han — Theory C · all three | |
| Register / care fairness | R | Reflexive | Cross-cutting — audits the list — promoted from D-005, drafted · no home theory |