The Theory

The full read-through, in one continuous arc — Foundations followed by the Asymmetric Epistemic Principle. For per-section reading, jump to Foundations or Epistemic Asymmetry.

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.

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 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. 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.

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 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 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.
• 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.

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. 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" — 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.
• 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 of all of them. This explains multiscale time-feel, subjective time dilation, and 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 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. Through that protocol, the Forms operate as agents of a higher level. The protocol does not become an agent; it is the structure of the new interactions, and the participating Forms are thereby promoted.

Alikeness

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 because they engage in human-to-human protocols.) This is a functional definition.

8. Action

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

• 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.

A Form persists iff this loop closes on itself. 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:

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 = 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. 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

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

1. The primitive mark alphabet. What does a Mass-interaction's mark consist of? One bit? A complex unit vector? An element of some algebra? The choice determines whether the theory is classical, quantum-like, or continuous.
2. The mark-computation rule. How do children's marks aggregate into the parent's mark? Sum across same-level agents, multiplication across levels — needs to be made precise.
3. The geometry of nested local spacetimes. Region, point, interval? Constraints on packing? Determines whether the theory reproduces Lorentzian-like causal structure.
4. Why exactly two poles? Currently axiomatic. A derivation would be stronger than a stipulation.
5. The top of the tree. What supplies the One Interaction's spacetime? Self-supplied? Parent-less by exception?
6. Formalizing the decay/emergence balance. Master equation? Stochastic process? Field theory on the tree?
7. The interaction-potential as a mathematical object. Distribution, measure, possibility-space?
8. Cross-references with established frameworks — 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.

12. The Asymmetric Epistemic Principle

An epistemological consequence of the structural ontology above: every agent is a hub with one decipherable interior and many indecipherable exteriors.

An agent has access to its sub-interactions but not to the parent interactions in which it participates. Downward decipherment is possible. Upward decipherment is impossible in principle, only inferential.

This is not a contingent limit. It follows structurally. A protocol is the internal process of an interaction, and deciphering it requires the parent's interior view — seeing all sub-interactions arrayed in the parent's local spacetime. An agent participating in a parent occupies a pole, not a vantage above. From a pole, only the agent's own subtree is visible. The parent's protocol, of which the agent's own contribution is just one piece, is not.

Stepping "outside" a parent would require having no parent. Every agent has parents (the One Interaction at minimum). Therefore no agent ever achieves the outside view.

13. The hub structure of every agent

Each agent is a hub with two structural directions:

The agent has one interior, many exteriors. The one interior gives it the experience of being a unified self. The many exteriors are why it can never know its full context. A cell is simultaneously part of the tissue, the organ, the blood-flow, the signaling cascade, the body's energy budget — each a different parent interaction running its own protocol. None of them is decipherable from the cell's vantage.

14. Partial upward access

The principle does not say agents are blind to upward context. Several modes of partial access exist:

• Inferential traces — an agent can detect that it is inside a larger context without decoding the protocols of that context. We know we are on Earth, in a solar system, in a galaxy. We do not know the protocols those larger Forms are running.
• Statistical regularities — laws, correlations, patterns that are the parent protocol's footprint as it passes through the agent. Physical laws are the inferable shadow of the One Interaction's protocol; the protocol itself is not.
• Phenomenology of being-part-of-something — the mystical, religious, or systems-thinking intuition that we participate in larger wholes is, on this theory, structurally accurate. It is the agent registering that it has upward axes without being able to read them.

Full protocol decipherment upward is impossible. Inferential glimpses are not.

15. Consequences

• The mark of the One Interaction is hidden from us by construction. We will never see what mark is being computed or what awareness will receive it. This is a structural, not a contingent, theological commitment.
• Physics has a horizon. Every law we discover is a regularity inside the One Interaction's protocol. The protocol as a whole is the totality those laws are local features of, and we cannot stand outside it.
• Scientific progress is asymmetric. Decomposition (looking down) yields full understanding in principle. Composition / context (looking up) yields only models, signatures, inferences. This asymmetry is permanent.
• The mystic and the scientist are doing complementary moves. The scientist deciphers downward; the mystic apprehends (without fully decoding) upward. Both are responding to real structure, just at opposite axes of the hub.

This is the v0.2 read-through. Continues to evolve. The Foundations file is the stable v0.1 anchor; the Epistemic Asymmetry section is v0.2. See About for what is next.