Theory Cards

The public theory structure is simple enough to navigate and honest enough not to look final.

Public hierarchy

Repair-Lag Systems Theory = spine
Reality and Meaning Mediation = lens
Synthetic Reality Capture = defensive provenance module
Reproductive Agency, Care, and Life Scripts = agency/care module
Theories A/B/C = ancestry and traceability, not public competitors

Repair-Lag Systems Theory

Status: provisional synthesis spine.

Public role: the research spine of the project, not a settled cross-domain law.

In selected, bounded domains, the working hypothesis is that a defined destabilizing pressure may outrun a specified repair process and predeclared adequacy criterion. The Repair Crisis is the project’s provisional research diagnosis, not a universal description of modern society.

The earlier technical label was Adaptive Substrate-Coordination Theory. That label remains in source documents for traceability, but the public site leads with Repair-Lag Systems Theory and treats the Repair Crisis as the provisional research diagnosis.

Open Repair-Lag Systems Theory

Reality and Meaning Mediation

Status: required lens, provisional.

Public role: examines scoped reality perception, belief recombination, meaning practices, and platform-mediated authority.

This lens prevents the Repair Crisis from becoming only a material or institutional theory. It asks how people come to know, trust, believe, belong, and orient themselves when older shared architectures weaken.

Open Reality and Meaning Mediation

Synthetic Reality Capture

Status: provisional defensive provenance module.

Public role: tests whether synthetic media adds measurable provenance or verification burdens in specified settings.

This module must remain defensive and provenance-oriented. It studies manipulation so publics and institutions can resist it, not so manipulation can be made more effective.

Open Synthetic Reality Capture

Reproductive Agency, Care, and Life Scripts

Status: provisional agency and care module.

Public role: tests a bounded reproductive intention-achievement pathway against preference and composition rivals while protecting agency.

This module protects reproductive agency, bodily autonomy, plural life projects, and anti-coercion. It rejects treating women, families, or children as instruments of demographic policy. Current cases illustrate bounded settings; they do not establish module-level causal validity.

Open Reproductive Agency, Care, and Life Scripts

Ancestor lenses

Theories A, B, and C are not public master theories. They are retained as mechanism libraries.

• A - Acceleration-Fragmentation-Reward: attention, reward loops, outrage, and tempo.
• B - Externalized Substrate: depletion, extraction, and hidden costs.
• C - Differentiated Systems Coordination Collapse: institutions operating by incompatible codes and time horizons.

How to read these cards

Do not read the theory cards as settled doctrine. Read them as organized hypotheses.

A good theory card should show:

• public status;
• what the theory examines or proposes to test;
• what remains outside its scope;
• the strongest objection;
• what would weaken it;
• misuse warning;
• linked cases;
• last reviewed.

If a card lacks those elements, it is not ready enough for public confidence.