Missing-data mechanisms is a specialization of classification. The general pattern assigns entities to discrete categories according to explicitly defined rules, with the category structure carrying meaning about what properties matter and what purposes the grouping serves. Rubin's MCAR/MAR/MNAR taxonomy instantiates this by sorting missingness processes into three bins defined by whether missingness is independent of all variables, conditional on observed values only, or dependent on the unobserved values themselves. The classification is consequential because it determines which estimation procedures yield valid inference.

Missing-data mechanisms is a specific kind of classification, sorting missingness processes into three categories that determine valid handling.


The MCAR/MAR/MNAR classification is the load-bearing missingness-assumption COMPONENT that imputation depends on to specify its fill. 'imputation depends on that classification to specify its assumption.' The taxonomy is the input; imputation is the whole response (fill and propagated uncertainty). After the statistics_experimental_design frame is stripped away, the retained structural roles are those of Imputation: Filling missing values from patterns in the available data under an explicit missingness assumption, with the imputation uncertainty propagated downstream. Missing Data Mechanisms (MCAR, MAR, MNAR) adds the local frame and commitments expressed in its identity: MCAR, MAR, MNAR. The parent pattern remains recognizable without that vocabulary, while the child is the framed realization of it. That preservation test establishes decomposition rather than taxonomic subsumption.


Missing data mechanisms is the specific shape observability takes when the inference problem is recovering values that were never recorded. Observability frames the general question of whether internal state can be inferred from available outputs; Rubin's classification specifies how the missingness process -- independent of the data (MCAR), conditional on observed variables (MAR), or dependent on unobserved values (MNAR) -- determines whether the missing entries are recoverable from what was observed. Each category corresponds to a distinct observability regime over the missingness mechanism.

MCAR/MAR/MNAR is the specific shape observability takes when the unobservable elements are missing data entries and the inference problem is reconstructing them.


Mission command is built from centralized intent and authority placed at the informed edge before changing conditions are known, allowing local execution without waiting for renewed central orders.

Pre-positioned authority for unforeseeable local choices is a constituent of mission command's decentralized-execution layer.


Mission command specializes coordination by centralizing a transmissible purpose while decentralizing the locally informed execution choices that serve it. Coordination supplies the genus: Aligning independently controlled actors so their separate actions combine into a coherent collective outcome despite distributed decision-making and incomplete shared information. Mission Command preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Centralize intent and decentralize execution, holding the slowly-evolving why at the top while delegating the rapidly-evolving how to the edge where information is freshest. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.

Mission command is one specific coordination architecture: actors cohere through shared intent rather than a stream of orders.


Decentralized execution coheres only when edge actors' default choices serve the centrally held intent; without that alignment, delegation produces fragmentation rather than mission command. Goal Congruence (Alignment) supplies the prerequisite condition: Alignment of objectives. Mission Command operates against that background: Centralize intent and decentralize execution, holding the slowly-evolving why at the top while delegating the rapidly-evolving how to the edge where information is freshest. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.

Mission command presupposes alignment between the center's intent and the edge actors' operative objectives.


The mixed layer is a specific structural mechanism that performs buffering (a homogenizing stirred surface sealing a stratified interior across a sharp discontinuity), with a stagnation failure mode generic buffering lacks. Presupposes/specializes the buffering function. Buffering supplies the prerequisite condition: A maintained intermediate capacity that absorbs excess and releases it during shortfall, smoothing variation and decoupling a source from a consumer whose rates do not match. Mixed Layer operates against that background: An actively-stirred, locally-homogeneous surface zone that buffers a stratified interior, joined to it by a sharp discontinuity. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


A specific configuration of layered zones (uniform stirred surface and stratified interior and sharp boundary) — a specialization of generic layering. Layering supplies the genus: Segments systems into levels. Mixed Layer preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: An actively-stirred, locally-homogeneous surface zone that buffers a stratified interior, joined to it by a sharp discontinuity. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


Every Mixed Strategy is a player's contingent strategic policy, but it replaces selection of one action with selection of a calibrated probability distribution over actions. It adds an adversarial prediction-denial purpose, fresh draws, and an indifference condition; pure, dominant, signaling, and commitment strategies show why the parent is broader.

Mixed Strategy is Game-Theoretic Strategy specialized to choosing a probability distribution over actions and drawing afresh to deny an adversary predictive advantage.


The live Mixed Strategy identity requires an action to be sampled afresh from a calibrated distribution so that an adversary who knows the weights still cannot predict the realization. That is Randomness relative to the adversary's predictor class. The encyclopedia's Randomization prime instead means chance assignment of experimental units to treatments for causal inference, which mixed strategic play neither is nor requires.

Every Mixed Strategy presupposes a Randomness source whose realized draws remain unpredictable to the relevant adversary.


Flow is the movement constituent inside Mixing. Whether the carrier is advection, diffusion, circulation, shuffling, or exchange, distinguishable material or information must cross local partitions for composition to become less dependent on original position. Mixing adds repeated interpenetration and the resulting reduction of spatial or sequential segregation; a flow can transport without mixing.

Mixing contains transport flows that exchange constituents among regions while conserving the total amount being redistributed.


Remove the bearer and its standing but inactive capacity and there is no reservoir to trigger, coordinate, sustain, or demobilize. Mobilization is the transition and channeling process; Latent Realizable Capacity is the prior dispositional state on which that process operates.

Mobilization presupposes a capacity that exists before deployment and can be activated into manifestation under triggering conditions.


The failed assumption is a load-bearing constituent of the model's warrant. If no proposition was being treated as true, there is no assumption to fail; if its truth was not load-bearing, discovering it false may revise detail but does not instantiate this pattern. Model Assumption Failure adds the dependency break and its consequence.

A model-assumption failure contains a proposition whose truth was required for the model-supported conclusion or action.


A model-assumption failure is relative to an artifact that stands in for a target system or future situation. The representation may be mathematical, verbal, procedural, or implicit in a plan, but it must encode enough of the world for an assumption to bear inferential or operational load. Reality can change without a model failing; failure arises when the represented dependency no longer holds.

The pattern presupposes a model, plan, theory, or specification that represents relevant conditions selectively.


MAUP is the specific finding that the CHOICE OF PARTITION used to aggregate is a non-neutral input determining the conclusions; it presupposes the aggregation operation. 'aggregating is the operation; MAUP is the specific finding that the choice of partition... is non-neutral'. Aggregation supplies the prerequisite condition: Deliberately collapsing many items into a single summary, choosing which information to discard to gain tractability. Modifiable Areal Unit Problem operates against that background: Statistics computed on aggregated data change, sometimes reversing sign, when the boundaries used to aggregate are redrawn — the partition is a non-neutral analytical input. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.


MAUP "is the spatial special case; this prime is the general representation-phenomenon match of which MAUP, overfitting, overcoding, and over-splitting are all substrate instances," and the What-It-Is-Not section repeats "Not modifiable_areal_unit_problem... this prime is the general... of which MAUP... are substrate instances." Direction verified: general grain-mismatch subsumes the spatial-unit special case. Grain of Analysis supplies the genus: The choice of the level of decomposition at which an operation is applied to a phenomenon, relative to the level at which the phenomenon's structure actually exists, where mismatch in either direction silently corrupts the operation's results. Modifiable Areal Unit Problem preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Statistics computed on aggregated data change, sometimes reversing sign, when the boundaries used to aggregate are redrawn — the partition is a non-neutral analytical input. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.


An event taking a before-state to an after-state under an identity-condition that licenses calling the after-state a CONTINUATION (not a replacement) of the same entity — a specialization of state_and_state_transition with an alter-without-ending invariant and an append-only record. State and State Transition supplies the genus: Captures system condition and evolution. Identity-Preserving Modification preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: An entity undergoes an event that changes some of its properties while an identity-condition licenses calling the after-state a continuation of the same entity rather than its replacement. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


Modularity is decomposition into discrete, independently-revisable units joined by stable interfaces. Decomposition supplies the genus: Breaking a whole into parts that can be analyzed independently and recombined to reconstitute the whole, making complexity tractable through divide-and-conquer. Modularity preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Breaks systems into smaller units. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


Monitoring is the observe-compare-trigger sensing arm that closes a regulatory feedback loop. Feedback supplies the prerequisite condition: Outputs influence inputs. Monitoring operates against that background: Continuously observing a system's state to detect deviation from expected behavior and trigger a response, separating genuine signal from routine noise. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.


Monitoring presupposes observability because its core operation — continuous or periodic observation of state to detect deviation — requires that the system's internal state be inferable from externally-visible outputs over time. It inherits observability's structural commitment that outputs over a sufficient interval reconstruct state, and operationalizes that property through metrics, logs, traces, and threshold checks. Without observability, monitoring has no readable signal and threshold-based detection collapses.

Monitoring presupposes observability because continuous detection of deviation requires that internal state be inferable from outputs.


A Monoid is not merely associative and closed: it must contain one element that leaves every carrier element unchanged on both sides and supplies the empty product. Identity Element can occur relative to operations outside this algebraic tier, but removing it reduces the structure to a Semigroup, establishing strict part-of composition.

A two-sided Identity Element is a constitutive part of every Monoid.


Monoid is a strict specialization of Semigroup. Forget the neutral-element requirement from any monoid and the same carrier-operation pair remains closed and associative, satisfying every Semigroup commitment. Monoid requires one two-sided identity, licensing empty products, empty folds, and a do-nothing element without requiring inverses.


Scarcity supplies the prerequisite condition: A finite resource is insufficient to satisfy all competing wants. Monopoly operates against that background: A single locus controls access to something for which there are no close substitutes. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.

Monopoly typically presupposes Scarcity, whose structure must already obtain for the child mechanism to be meaningful or operational.


Monte Carlo simulation is a specialization of approximation: it deliberately substitutes a tractable surrogate — the empirical distribution from N random draws — for an intractable target distribution or integral, accepting bounded error (variance scaling as 1/√N) in exchange for computability. It inherits approximation's four-part discipline: the exact object (the true expectation or distribution), the simpler surrogate (the sample mean), the error measure (variance or confidence interval), and the tolerance the use case can absorb.

Monte Carlo simulation is a kind of approximation that substitutes a sampled empirical distribution for an intractable analytical target.


Monte Carlo simulation presupposes iteration because the law-of-large-numbers convergence at rate 1/√N is achieved only through repeated sampling, with each draw updating the empirical distribution that approximates the target. It depends on iteration's structural commitments: a single step (draw and evaluate), state carried between rounds (the accumulating sample), a stopping condition (target variance reached), and a progress notion (variance shrinkage). Without the iterative apparatus, Monte Carlo collapses to a single sample with no statistical guarantee.

Monte Carlo simulation presupposes iteration because convergence to the empirical distribution requires repeatedly drawing and aggregating samples until error shrinks sufficiently.


Monte Carlo simulation presupposes probability because its method draws random samples from specified input distributions and aggregates the resulting outputs into an empirical distribution approximating the true answer. Without the prior calibration of uncertainty as probability, with sample spaces, events, distributions, and laws of additivity, conditioning, and normalization, there is nothing from which to sample, no convergence guarantee from the law of large numbers, and no meaningful interpretation of the empirical-distribution output. Probability supplies the formal substrate that the simulation samples from and converges to.

Monte Carlo simulation presupposes probability because its random-sampling-and-aggregation method requires a calibrated quantification of input uncertainty.


Moral hazard is a specialization of the agency problem in which the divergence between principal and agent runs specifically through hidden action: after the contract is in place, the agent chooses an unobservable level of effort, care, or risk, and being insulated from full consequences chooses differently than full-information contracting would prescribe. It inherits the agency problem's structure of delegation under misaligned interests and unobservability, and specializes by fixing the hidden element to action rather than type. The contractual remedy then centers on incentive design rather than screening or signaling.

Moral hazard is a specialization of the agency problem in which the agent's hidden element is a post-contract action rather than a type.


Moral hazard is the specific shape information asymmetry takes when the unequal private knowledge concerns an agent's post-contract action — level of care, effort, risk-taking — that the other party cannot observe or can observe only at prohibitive cost. It is a structurally-particularized instance of one side knowing something material that the other cannot verify, with the added commitments that the hidden element is an action rather than a type, the asymmetry arises after agreement rather than before, and the agent's insulation from full consequences distorts the action away from what full-information contracting would produce.

Moral hazard is the specific shape information asymmetry takes when the hidden information is an agent's action after a contract is in place.


Moral_hazard is 'the Peltzman effect WITH explicit contracts' — the special case where the cost-lowering mechanism is a written risk transfer; Peltzman is the general case (any safeguard: helmet, vaccine, perimeter control). Peltzman is the more-general parent. Peltzman Effect supplies the genus: When a safeguard lowers the cost of failure, an agent reallocates the freed risk-budget into riskier behavior, partly offsetting the intended gain. Moral Hazard preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Risk-taking under protection. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


A moral panic is a self-amplifying episode of concern about a perceived threat, disproportionate to actual threat magnitude, following a recognizable life cycle. The self-amplification is constitutively a feedback structure: media coverage drives public concern, public concern drives political response, political response drives more coverage. Each round's output feeds back as the next round's input. Feedback supplies the closure between cause and effect that makes self-amplification possible. Without a loop routing output back to input, the wave could not build to disproportionate magnitude or run its characteristic course.

Moral panic presupposes feedback because its self-amplifying wave of concern requires output-to-input loop closure across media, public, and authority.


Moral relativism presupposes normativity because its entire thesis is a claim about the truth conditions of moral judgments: that the standard of correctness is not absolute but indexed to a culture, period, or appraiser. Without the prior availability of an ought-side practice in which evaluation against a standard occurs, there is nothing for the relativizing move to operate on. Relativism does not deny that moral claims have evaluative force; it inherits normativity's structure of standard-and-evaluation and adds the further commitment that the standard varies with the indexed frame.

Moral relativism presupposes normativity because it operates on moral judgments — claims of correctness — by indexing them to evaluative frames.


Motif = recurrence PLUS variation-under-invariance (equivalence class under a permitted-transformation group) + cumulative significance. Identical return is repetition, not motif; motif is the enriched specialization of recurrence.

Motif = recurrence PLUS variation-under-invariance (equivalence class under a permitted-transformation group) and cumulative significance.


Motivated Reasoning is a strict specialization of Bias. Both are process-level systematic directional displacements from a true, fair, or intended target rather than random scatter or one mistaken output. Motivated Reasoning fixes the displaced process to evidence handling or belief update and fixes the direction to one selected by a non-epistemic goal or preferred conclusion.


The child presupposes Preference. Remove the ordering that favors one conclusion, identity outcome, comfort state, action policy, or social result over another and the directional motivation disappears; cold error may remain, but not motivated reasoning. Motivated reasoning is an evidence-handling process steered by a preference, not an ordering relation over alternatives. Preference is the directional stake the process consumes.


Visual movement presupposes attention because compositional flow operates by selectively gating the viewer's perceptual resource: implied lines, diagonals, and rhythmic repetitions only carry meaning when they capture and route the limited gaze the viewer can deploy. Without attention's filter mechanism that selects a subset of available information for deep processing, the directional cues would have no purchase. The eye's traced path through a work is precisely an attentional allocation, sequenced by the artist.

Visual movement presupposes attention because directional cues only function by selectively guiding the viewer's limited gaze resource through the composition.


Visual movement presupposes emphasis because orchestrating directional cues, rhythmic relations, and spatial flow is the act of foregrounding selected pathways against the composition's static background. The emphasis quartet -- foregrounded element, contrast background, emphasis vehicle, attentional payoff -- maps onto the movement case as the path-of-attention, the surrounding field, the implied-line or rhythm vehicle, and the perceptual sequencing. Without emphasis's structure of differential salience against ground, movement would be undirected flow rather than guided perceptual journey. Emphasis supplies the prerequisite condition: Highlighting priority element. Movement (Visual Movement) operates against that background: Guides viewer’s eye. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.

Visual movement presupposes emphasis because directing the viewer's eye through a composition is the foregrounding mechanism applied across time.


Attractor Selection and Basin Control supplies the prerequisite condition: System dynamics directed toward stable states via basin manipulation. Multi Path Convergence operates against that background: Multiple distinct trajectories from different starts arrive at the same end-state, with the destination doing the work. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.

Multi Path Convergence typically presupposes Attractor Selection and Basin Control, whose structure must already obtain for the child mechanism to be meaningful or operational.


Calls it 'the equifinality specialization of convergence'. BUT the dedup dossier disputes this parent (see discrepancy). Confidence on THIS edge: low-medium. Convergence supplies the genus: Movement toward stable state. Multi Path Convergence preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Multiple distinct trajectories from different starts arrive at the same end-state, with the destination doing the work. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.

Multi Path Convergence is typically a specialization of Convergence, retaining the parent's defining structure while adding the child's specific commitments.


Multiobjective optimization is a specialization of optimization. Specifically, it instantiates the search-for-an-element-maximizing-or-minimizing-an-objective-under-constraints pattern with the objective being a vector rather than scalar, so that the notion of optimality becomes Pareto non-dominance and the solution becomes a set of trade-off-distinct candidates. Like single-objective optimization, it specifies decision variables, objectives, constraints, and an operative notion of best; multiobjective is the subclass where preference articulation -- a priori, a posteriori, or interactive -- is required to collapse the Pareto frontier to a chosen solution.

Multiobjective optimization is a specialization of optimization with two or more incommensurable objectives yielding a Pareto frontier rather than a single optimum.


Multiobjective optimization is a specialization of trade-offs. The general pattern is the structural situation in which improving on one valued dimension requires worsening on another within a feasible set, with multiple dimensions genuinely cared about. Multiobjective optimization instantiates this by formalizing the dimensions as objective functions and the trade-off as the Pareto frontier of non-dominated solutions, requiring a-priori, a-posteriori, or interactive preference articulation to select one. It is the trade-off pattern made explicit as a mathematical search whose output is the geometry of the trade-off surface itself.

Multiobjective optimization is a specific kind of trade-off where multiple objectives are formalized into a Pareto frontier of non-dominated solutions.


The correction is defined over false-rejection risk aggregated across a family of tests. Choosing FWER, FDR, or another family-level criterion and tightening or ranking thresholds is unintelligible without distinguishing false positives from false negatives and recognizing their power trade-off. Type I/II Errors supplies that prior error framework; the correction is not a species of the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy and is not merely a remedy link encoded as taxonomy.

Multiple-comparisons correction presupposes the false-positive/false-negative error framework because it controls aggregate false positives by trading threshold stringency against missed true effects.


Multiplexing presupposes aggregation because the many-into-one move -- packing multiple logical channels onto a single physical resource -- is aggregation applied to a transport substrate, with the division scheme (time, frequency, code, space) acting as the function that decides what is retained and what is interleaved. The reverse demultiplex operation depends on the aggregation's structure being chosen so that per-stream identity is recoverable. Without aggregation's discipline of deciding-what-to-fold-together, the streams would interfere rather than share the substrate non-destructively. Aggregation supplies the prerequisite condition: Deliberately collapsing many items into a single summary, choosing which information to discard to gain tractability. Multiplexing operates against that background: Sharing one channel among many signals by dividing time, frequency, or code. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.

Multiplexing presupposes aggregation because it collapses many logical streams onto one physical substrate while retaining the per-stream identities for later separation.


Multiplexing partitions a single physical channel along time, frequency, code, or space so that multiple logical streams share it without interference. The pattern only earns its keep when channel capacity is scarce relative to demand: where bandwidth is abundant, no division scheme is needed. Multiplexing is therefore a specialization of scarcity — specifically a structural allocation response to scarce shared substrate — that uses non-overlapping interleaving rather than competition or pricing to share the resource.

Multiplexing is a kind of scarcity management: many logical streams share one physical channel because channel capacity is the binding constraint.


For a positive state X with X(t+1) = X(t)R(t+1), taking logarithms gives log X(t+1) = log X(t) + log R(t+1). Under the prime's independence and common-increment assumptions, log X is therefore an additive Random Walk. The multiplicative prime adds positivity, proportional change, the exponential map back to levels, and the resulting asymmetric distributional interpretation.

Multiplicative Random Growth contains an additive Random Walk in log-state because logarithms turn the product of proportional shocks into their running sum.


Coordination supplies the genus: Aligning independently controlled actors so their separate actions combine into a coherent collective outcome despite distributed decision-making and incomplete shared information. Mutual Exclusion preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Guarantee that at most one party occupies a designated state or resource at a time. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.

Mutual Exclusion is typically a specialization of Coordination, retaining the parent's defining structure while adding the child's specific commitments.


Naming_convention's load-bearing fourth leg is a "community commitment" — a community agreeing to mint identifiers by these rules and not otherwise — which is a species of the agreement-on-a-norm ACT that standardization (canonical, island seed) names as its genus. A naming convention is a standardization act applied to the artifact-minting problem (generator+grammar+uniqueness+commitment). Direction is clean: naming_convention is the narrower, identifier-specific instance. Standardization supplies the genus: The act or process by which independent parties converge on a single shared specification, format, or interface — agreement on a common norm rather than the benefits that follow from it. Naming Convention preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Names or identifiers are minted not freely but by explicit generative rules a community commits to, buying predictability, parseability, and collision-avoidance. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.


Representation is the structured mapping of a target system onto a medium under a faithfulness convention, preserving selected features. Narrative is the particular shape this mapping takes when the target is a stream of events and the medium is sequenced emplotted prose: selected events are connected by causal-temporal links into a whole with beginning, middle, and end, organized around agents. It is a structurally-particularized instance of representation in which the structure preserved is temporal-causal ordering and the convention is emplotment that confers significance through ordered connection.

Narrative is the specific shape representation takes when events are sequenced and causally linked into a story with agents and an arc.


Historical narrative construction presupposes interpretation because selecting events, sequencing them, and connecting them through causal and thematic links is interpretive work — each selection and connection is a reading of the evidentiary record under a framework that makes some readings available and others not. Without interpretation's underlying meaning-recovery operation, the construction would be mere chronology without significance, plot, or agency. Interpretation supplies the constrained-reading machinery on which the historian's emplotment, foregrounding, and moral commitments operate to produce a story rather than a list.

Historical narrative construction presupposes interpretation because selecting and connecting evidentiary traces into a story requires reading them within a meaning-recovery framework.


Historical narrative construction is the specific shape narrative takes when the events being selected, sequenced, and connected are drawn from an evidentiary historical record. Narrative's general anatomy — selection of events, causal-temporal connection, beginning-middle-end emplotment, interpretive arc — is structurally particularized into the historian's choices: which traces enter the story, which causal and moral links are made explicit, which elements are backgrounded or footnoted. The general emplotment operation is preserved; the specific shape is its accountability to an evidentiary record that constrains but underdetermines the narrative produced.

Historical narrative construction is the specific shape narrative takes when its events are drawn from an evidentiary record about the past.


Narrative persuasion shifts attitudes by drawing audiences into a storyworld whose assumptions are imported wholesale into their working model while counter-argumentation is suppressed. This rests on framing: the structural claim that presentation systematically shapes perception by what is made salient, what is taken as reference, what vocabulary and categories organize the content. A narrative is a sustained configuration of exactly these framing choices, made through character, setting, and plot. Without the framing mechanism by which configuration shapes judgment, story-mediated transportation would have no purchase.

Narrative persuasion presupposes framing because story-mediated transportation works by selecting and configuring how the storyworld presents its content.


Narrative persuasion shifts belief through story-mediated transportation: the audience inhabits a storyworld and imports its assumptions into their working model. This presupposes narrative itself, the structural pattern in which events are selected, sequenced, and emplotted into a whole with beginning, development, and closure organized around agents. Without an emplotted artifact whose meaning arises from ordered connection rather than from individual claims, there is no storyworld to be transported into and no character to identify with; the suppression of counter-argument depends on processing a world-to-inhabit rather than a proposition.

Narrative persuasion presupposes narrative because the persuasive mechanism operates through emplotted story structure, not bare claims.


A Nash Equilibrium is commonly and usefully read as an Equilibrium: each participant's best response balances the others' choices so no unilateral change improves the participant's payoff. The generic Equilibrium entry, however, also requires a restoring or maintaining mechanism and a stability regime under perturbation. A Nash profile can be dynamically unstable or unreachable, so the relation remains typical rather than strict.

Nash Equilibrium is the strategic-choice analogue of generic Equilibrium, but unilateral-deviation stability need not supply the restoring dynamics required by every strict Equilibrium case.


A Nash equilibrium is by definition a fixed point of the joint best-response correspondence. Fixed Point supplies the genus: A state a transformation leaves unchanged — self-consistency under update — organizing analysis into existence, uniqueness, stability, and basin of attraction. Nash Equilibrium preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A strategy profile in which no agent can improve its payoff by unilaterally changing strategy, given the others' choices — the fixed point of the joint best-response correspondence. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.


A Nash Equilibrium is constituted by a profile of agents' strategies. Each component strategy maps that agent's information or contingency to an action, and the equilibrium condition tests every component against unilateral replacement while holding the others fixed. Game-Theoretic Strategy is therefore a strict part of the equilibrium profile, not a merely typical background frame and not the genus of the profile.

Every Nash Equilibrium is a strategy profile containing one Game-Theoretic Strategy for each agent.


The failure is a lossy recoding of a source's meaning-bearing partition into a foreign taxonomy; it presupposes a classification/recoding act and names its destructive (merge/split, irrecoverable) special case. Built on the recoding step.


It is a pathology of translating one category scheme into another — lossy, asymmetric, one-way. Translation and Conceptual Bridging supplies the genus: Convert concepts or meanings between incommensurable frameworks. Native-Category Flattening preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A source system's own partition of the world is silently collapsed when an external observer recodes it into a foreign taxonomy without first preserving the source partition, destroying distinctions the downstream analysis would have needed and that recoded labels cannot recover. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


Natural selection contains Selection's candidate population, operative pressure, differential continuation, and resulting composition shift. It adds heritable variation, differential reproduction or persistence, transmission of retained traits, and iteration across generations or rounds. Those differentiae distinguish it from one-shot filtering, institutional admission, and pruning of components within one already built system.

Natural selection is selection specialized to heritable variants whose unequal reproduction or persistence shifts population composition across repeated rounds.


Benign-Sampling Safety Drift supplies the genus: A system near a hazard boundary reads a benign sample of outcomes — uneventful only because the hazard is rare, not because the margin is safe — as proof the safety margin is unnecessary, so each lucky round licenses the next erosion until a low-probability event finds the now-absent buffer. Near-Miss Normalization preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A system reads the absence of harm in a narrowly-averted event as evidence of robustness rather than as a signal of lost margin, so it resets the margin to the smaller value and drifts its operating envelope toward the failure boundary while still counting itself safe. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.

Near-Miss Normalization is a specialization of Benign-Sampling Safety Drift, retaining the parent's defining structure while adding the child's specific commitments.


Bias supplies the genus: Systematic, directional error distinct from random noise. Near-Miss Normalization preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A system reads the absence of harm in a narrowly-averted event as evidence of robustness rather than as a signal of lost margin, so it resets the margin to the smaller value and drifts its operating envelope toward the failure boundary while still counting itself safe. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.

Near-Miss Normalization is typically a specialization of Bias, retaining the parent's defining structure while adding the child's specific commitments.


A proposed intervention fits only relative to what the beneficiary can already do, including doing nothing. Comparing supplied capability, burdens, and outcomes with that alternative is an internal constituent of the alignment test. The same solution can therefore fit one context and fail another without changing intrinsically.

Alignment is established relative to a current alternative or threshold, not from the solution's qualities in isolation.


The proposed solution and the need-side context must be capable of composing without contradiction across their relevant interfaces and constraints. Need–Solution Alignment inherits that relational fit and adds a beneficiary, a capability that addresses the need, and a better-than-current-alternative performance condition.

Need–Solution Alignment is compatibility specialized from non-interference to positive functional adequacy for a stated need.


Needs become testable when expressed as requirements, limits, tolerances, timing, access conditions, or other constraints. A benefit that ignores a binding condition does not align even if it improves some secondary dimension. Constraint is therefore part of the fit relation rather than background decoration.

The need is operationalized through binding conditions the solution must satisfy in the beneficiary's context.


Falsifiability supplies the prerequisite condition: A claim is scientific only if it could in principle be empirically refuted. Negative Case Analysis operates against that background: Deliberately hunt the cases that would overturn your account, then revise or scope it. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.

Negative Case Analysis typically presupposes Falsifiability, whose structure must already obtain for the child mechanism to be meaningful or operational.


'Negative space is one ARTISTIC instance of the complement... Complement is the substrate-independent operator; negative space is its application in visual composition.' complement is the general parent, negative_space the art-aesthetics child. Add complement as parent (negative_space keeps figure_ground). Complement supplies the genus: Everything in a declared universe that is not in a designated subset. Negative Space preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Empty space shaping form. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.


Negative space is the specific shape figure-ground takes when the recessive ground is deliberately structured and made to do compositional work — directing attention, providing rest, generating meaning through emptiness — rather than being treated as unattended backdrop. It is a structurally-particularized instance of the figure-ground organization in which something stands out against context, with the added commitment that the ground itself is shaped, scaled, and weighted as a design element. Absence becomes presence: the unpopulated area carries communicative force precisely as the non-figure half of the reciprocal assignment.

Negative space is the specific shape figure-ground takes when the ground is deliberately structured as a compositional element rather than merely backdrop.


'the neighborhood of a point is the PRIMITIVE of topology itself: open sets, continuity, limits, convergence are all defined locally.' Neighborhood presupposes/founds a proximity structure; topology is its native home. (Could be read as foundational; topology-presupposes is the cleanest hook.). Topology supplies the prerequisite condition: Studies properties preserved under deformation. Neighborhood operates against that background: The local-context window of elements close to a focal point under a proximity structure. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


After the mathematics frame is stripped away, the retained structural roles are those of Reservoir-Flux Network: Named stocks linked by conserved flows. Network adds the local frame and commitments expressed in its identity: Models interactions between components. The parent pattern remains recognizable without that vocabulary, while the child is the framed realization of it. That preservation test establishes decomposition rather than taxonomic subsumption.

Network is the framed or domain-specific realization of Reservoir-Flux Network; removing the local frame leaves the parent's structural relation intact.


A network broker sitting between source access and audience ties with interpretive authority is a specific instantiation of the choke-point-plus-arbiter gatekeeping structure. Gatekeeping supplies the genus: An actor or mechanism at a choke point exercises selective passage control, shaping the downstream distribution in ways the audience cannot directly observe. Network Broker Role preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A network position combining upstream access, downstream tie capacity, and interpretive authority that makes its holder a productive required intermediary. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


A positional property OF a network — presupposes a network substrate (nodes/ties with a source side and receiver side). Network supplies the prerequisite condition: Models interactions between components. Network Broker Role operates against that background: A network position combining upstream access, downstream tie capacity, and interpretive authority that makes its holder a productive required intermediary. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.


And dedup-style read: a specific role-type fixed by three positional features (upstream access, downstream capacity, interpretive authority) and pass-through. role is the genus; this is the enriched child. Role supplies the genus: A bundle of expected behaviours attached to a social position. Network Broker Role preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A network position combining upstream access, downstream tie capacity, and interpretive authority that makes its holder a productive required intermediary. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.


Feedback is the closure in which a system's output is routed back to influence its subsequent input, with the present depending on the system's own prior output. Network effects is the particular shape this closure takes in adoption dynamics: each additional user raises the platform's value to all users, which raises the probability that further potential users adopt, which raises the value again. It is a structurally-particularized instance of positive feedback whose specific tap is installed-base size and whose specific coupling is the value-to-adoption-probability relation.

Network effects is the specific shape feedback takes when each new user makes the system more valuable to all existing users, reinforcing further adoption.


Network effects are a kind of increasing returns specialized to a demand-side accumulation: each additional user raises the value of the good for every other user, so marginal utility rises rather than falls as the installed base grows. It inherits the general pattern that the marginal benefit of additional accumulation rises with the cumulative state variable, producing self-reinforcing dynamics and lock-in, and supplies the specific case where the accumulating variable is user adoption and the increasing-returns mechanism operates on the demand side rather than through production cost.

Network effects are a specialization of increasing returns in which the rising marginal value comes from demand-side adoption rather than supply-side scale.


'network effects are one prominent MANIFESTATION of complementarity (more users raise the value of joining), but complementarity is the general payoff mechanism.' strategic_complementarity is the more-general parent of network_effect. Strategic Complementarity supplies the genus: One actor's action raises the marginal benefit of others taking the same action. Network Effect preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Value increases with users. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


Network flow models presuppose flow because their entire formulation imports flow's structural commitments: a conserved quantity moves through directed edges with capacity limits, conservation at internal nodes equates inflow with outflow, and the objective is to maximize or cost-minimize a directional throughput from source to sink. Without the prior availability of flow as continuous directional transfer obeying conservation and gradient-driven movement through a structured channel network, max-flow, min-cost flow, and multi-commodity flow have no substrate on which their LP structure can rest.

Network flow models presuppose flow because they formalize routing and allocation as directed transport with capacity limits and conservation at every node.


Network flow models route resources through graphs with capacitated directed edges subject to flow conservation at internal nodes, optimizing total flow or cost. The entire formulation requires a connection pattern as its substrate: nodes for junctions, edges for routes, and the topology that determines reachability and bottlenecks. Without a network as a first-class object — entities together with pairwise connections — there would be no graph over which to define capacities, no conservation constraints to write, and no specialized algorithms exploiting the network structure to invoke.

Network flow models presupposes network because flows, capacities, and conservation are defined on the underlying graph of nodes and connections.


Optimization supplies the genus: Finds best solution under constraints. Network Flow Models preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Optimize flow across networks. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.

Network Flow Models is a specialization of Optimization, retaining the parent's defining structure while adding the child's specific commitments.


A traversal requires a node set and an adjacency relation that determine what may be visited next. Network supplies that possibility structure. Traversal adds seeds, a frontier policy, visit-state bookkeeping, and a stopping rule; it is therefore a process operating on a network rather than a kind of network or one constituent inside every network.

Network traversal presupposes a network because its visitable states and permitted next steps are defined by nodes and edges in an underlying relational structure.


Niche_construction is a SPECIALIZATION of feedback where the fed-back variable is specifically the ENVIRONMENT OF SELECTION (which variants are favored), not any state the agent influences. feedback is the parent. Feedback supplies the genus: Outputs influence inputs. Niche Construction preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: An agent modifies its environment, and the modified environment changes the selection pressures acting back on the modifier — the environment is endogenous. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.


Informal Fallacy supplies the genus: A named, recurring pattern of defective argument whose error lies not in logical form but in content, context, or the relevance and acceptability of its premises — so it can be valid in form yet still fail as reasoning. Nirvana Fallacy preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Rejecting a real, available option because it falls short of an idealized counterfactual, when the operative comparison should be against the best feasible alternative. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.

Nirvana Fallacy is a specialization of Informal Fallacy, retaining the parent's defining structure while adding the child's specific commitments.


It rules out a procedure that dominates over the full problem space and forces the designer to restrict the domain or accept that every inductive bias gains on one class by losing on its complement.

No Free Lunch is the impossibility result that universal method superiority cannot coexist with an unrestricted problem distribution.


Summed over all admissible problems, performance remains equal across methods, so any gain on one class is exactly offset by loss on the complementary class.

No Free Lunch is a conservation law specialized to total method performance averaged over problem-space.


No one is above the rules is a specialization of rule of law. Specifically, it crystallizes the architectural commitment that no element is exempt from the system's governing rules -- including those who create or enforce them -- into the maxim that legal rules apply uniformly regardless of rank, status, or power. Like the broader rule-of-law principle, it rests on impartial application and reflexive self-binding of rule-makers; this subclass is the specific universal-applicability proposition that operationalizes uniformity and rejects hierarchical exemption.

No one is above the rules is a specialization of rule of law that articulates its equality-before-law commitment as a universally applicable maxim.


Informal Fallacy supplies the genus: A named, recurring pattern of defective argument whose error lies not in logical form but in content, context, or the relevance and acceptability of its premises — so it can be valid in form yet still fail as reasoning. No True Scotsman preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: When a counterexample to a universal claim appears, membership in the subject category is redefined to exclude it, preserving the claim by emptying it of content. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.

No True Scotsman is a specialization of Informal Fallacy, retaining the parent's defining structure while adding the child's specific commitments.


Principle of Least Action supplies the prerequisite condition: Optimal system paths. Noether's Theorem operates against that background: Symmetry links to conservation. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.

Noether's Theorem presupposes Principle of Least Action, whose structure must already obtain for the child mechanism to be meaningful or operational.


A continuous symmetry of the action is an explicit input to Noether's theorem. The theorem adds the correspondence to a conservation law; it is not itself a kind of symmetry. Its existing least-action prerequisite is retained as a separate parent.

Noether's theorem presupposes a continuous symmetry of the action from which it derives a conserved current.


Both contrast an official/documented description with an enacted reality; nominal_vs_actual_control is the narrower, assurance-centred case specifically about a CONTROL/safeguard's documented vs enacted register PLUS the sampling-mismatch of the assurance apparatus. is a specialization of (specialized) formal-vs-informal split, scoped to controls and assurance. Formal vs. Informal Structures supplies the genus: Official vs actual systems. Nominal vs. Actual Control preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Every control exists as a documented nominal form and an enacted actual form, and the assurance apparatus usually samples only the former. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


Non-Zero-Sum Game classifies a strategic interaction by evaluating joint payoff across alternative strategy profiles. It therefore requires players, their admissible Game-Theoretic Strategies, and the profiles those strategies form. The game is not itself a contingent policy from information to action, so subsumption conflates the payoff structure with one of the objects it presupposes.

Every Non-Zero-Sum Game strictly presupposes a strategy-profile space over which joint payoff can vary.


Nonparametric methods stand in for the true unknown distribution using ranks, order statistics, resampling, or flexible estimators rather than committing to a specified functional family. That is the canonical move of approximation: substituting a tractable surrogate for an intractable target while carrying explicit guarantees about the error. Nonparametric methods specialize approximation to the case where the surrogate avoids strong distributional assumptions, trading parametric efficiency for robustness to misspecification.

Nonparametric Methods are a kind of approximation: ranks and flexible estimators substitute tractable surrogates for unspecified distributions.


Nonparametric methods are defined by contrast with parametric approaches: they minimize or avoid the distributional assumption rather than abolish the framing of distributional choice. Without the distributional-assumption machinery — the recognition that modeling uncertain quantities requires a commitment about probability-distribution shape — there would be no design dimension along which nonparametric methods could be located as the minimal-commitment pole. The parent prime supplies the structural choice (what to assume about shape) that nonparametric methods occupy a particular position on.

Nonparametric methods presuppose distributional assumption because they are constituted as the minimal-assumption alternative within the distributional-assumption design space.


Distribution-free methods maintain valid inference across distributional variation — statistical robustness to functional-form misspecification. Robustness supplies the genus: Maintain functionality under stress. Nonparametric Methods preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Distribution-free analysis. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


Nonparametric methods are the distribution-free or distribution-light specialization of statistical inference: they draw conclusions about populations from samples without committing to a specific parametric distribution family, relying instead on ranks, order statistics, resampling, or flexible estimators. Where statistical inference names the broad reasoning from sample to population under explicit uncertainty accounting generally, the nonparametric specialization fixes the assumption profile as minimal, trading some efficiency under correctly-specified models for robustness across distributional shapes.

Nonparametric methods are a specialization of statistical inference characterized by minimal assumptions about the underlying distribution's functional form.


Benign-Sampling Safety Drift supplies the genus: A system near a hazard boundary reads a benign sample of outcomes — uneventful only because the hazard is rare, not because the margin is safe — as proof the safety margin is unnecessary, so each lucky round licenses the next erosion until a low-probability event finds the now-absent buffer. Normalization of Deviance preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: An operating standard drifts outward because small departures, each repeatedly observed without immediate catastrophe, are reclassified as normal. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.

Normalization of Deviance is a specialization of Benign-Sampling Safety Drift, retaining the parent's defining structure while adding the child's specific commitments.


Normativity is the specific shape constraint takes when the binding restriction operates evaluatively rather than physically: it specifies which states, actions, or beliefs count as correct, required, permissible, or prohibited, and renders the rest subject to criticism rather than impossible. It is a structurally-particularized instance of restricting an admissible set, with the added commitment that admissibility is enforced through evaluation, judgment, and the practice of holding-to-account rather than through physical incompatibility. The standard plays the role constraint plays generally — partitioning what counts as acceptable — but does so in the ought-mode.

Normativity is the specific shape constraint takes when the binding restriction is an evaluative standard against which states can be judged correct or incorrect.


Nucleation's free-energy barrier is a kind of activation energy (the height one element of the mechanism crosses); the prime presupposes a barrier. 'activation energy is one element' of nucleation. Activation Energy supplies the prerequisite condition: The minimum input that must be supplied to push a thermodynamically favorable but stalled process past a barrier before momentum carries it to completion. Nucleation operates against that background: A metastable system cannot transition globally because a new phase's surface cost exceeds its volume benefit at small size; transition begins only when a seed crosses the critical-nucleus threshold and then grows. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.


Nucleation is the specific mechanism by which a metastable system transitions via a critical seed overcoming surface-cost barrier, a specialized process presupposing metastability of the parent phase. Metastability supplies the genus: A system persists in a locally stable configuration that is not the global optimum, held there by a barrier that routine disturbances cannot clear. Nucleation preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A metastable system cannot transition globally because a new phase's surface cost exceeds its volume benefit at small size; transition begins only when a seed crosses the critical-nucleus threshold and then grows. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.


Nucleation is 'one route to threshold-driven order, not the genus' — the specific surface-cost-exceeds-volume-benefit-at-small-size mechanism (critical nucleus and hysteresis) within the broader family of order appearing past a threshold. Threshold-Driven Order Emergence supplies the genus: Order after critical point. Nucleation preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A metastable system cannot transition globally because a new phase's surface cost exceeds its volume benefit at small size; transition begins only when a seed crosses the critical-nucleus threshold and then grows. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


The entity's identity and predicted state must remain encoded while observations are absent so later evidence can be re-bound to the same continuing object. Representation supplies an internal constituent: Model complex ideas. Object Permanence requires that role within this mechanism: A system maintains persistent internal state for entities it cannot currently observe, modeling them as continuing to exist and re-binding them on re-emergence. Remove the parent-role and the child loses a required internal operation, even though the parent can exist outside the child. The child is therefore built from the parent rather than being a taxonomic kind of it.

A persistent internal representation carried through unobservable intervals is a constitutive part of object permanence.


Objective creep is one expression of the ratchet effect (asymmetric add/subtract friction) operating specifically on goal-sets — low-friction to add a sub-objective, high-friction to subtract. is a specialization of a ratchet on an authorized goal portfolio. Ratchet Effect supplies the genus: Direction-asymmetric coupling plus a locking element produces accumulating one-way displacement under bidirectional forcing. Objective Creep preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: An actor's effective goal boundary expands beyond what its original plan was sized for, as locally-reasonable sub-objectives are added under engagement through low-friction addition and high-friction subtraction, diluting the original objective. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.


This prime is path_dependence PLUS a scale law — history constrains the present (path dependence) AND the rate at which observables convert to binding constraints scales with observer count and elapsed time, making dependence a forecastable trajectory. is a specialization of path_dependence, specialized by the observability-creates-dependence scale mechanism. Path Dependence supplies the genus: Outcomes are shaped by the specific historical sequence of past choices, which lock in consequences and foreclose alternatives that persist despite present incentives to change. Observable Surface Becomes Contract preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Every observable behaviour, exposed to enough observers over enough time, becomes a binding dependency regardless of the nominal contract. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


Observational learning is a kind of learning specialized to a particular acquisition channel: attending to, encoding, reproducing, and being motivated by others' modeled behavior and its consequences. It inherits learning's general commitment that the agent's internal capability is durably updated by experience or information, and narrows the experience to vicarious observation rather than direct trial-and-error or direct reinforcement. The four sub-processes — attention, retention, reproduction, motivation — are the specific machinery by which the general experience-driven self-update operates when the experience is watching another agent act.

Observational learning is a specialization of learning in which acquisition occurs through watching others rather than through direct trial-and-error.


Measurement and Disturbance supplies the genus: Obtaining information while minimizing measurement perturbation. Observer Effect preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Observation alters system. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.

Observer Effect is a specialization of Measurement and Disturbance, retaining the parent's defining structure while adding the child's specific commitments.


The observer effect specializes measurement uncertainty by fixing the source of error as the measurement-system interaction itself: the act of observation perturbs the observed quantity. Where measurement uncertainty names the general gap between true state and measured state arising from instrument limits, observer error, environmental variation, or systematic bias, the observer effect specifies that the noise source is not external limitation but the irreducible coupling between apparatus and system — a particular shape uncertainty takes when measurement is necessarily invasive.

The observer effect is a specialization of measurement uncertainty in which the act of measuring perturbs the system and thereby alters what is measured.


The observer effect presupposes observability because the phenomenon -- the measurement act altering the system being measured -- is intelligible only relative to observability's claim that internal state can be inferred from outputs. Observability frames the inference goal; the observer effect names the back-action coupling through which the measurement apparatus's read-out unavoidably perturbs the source state. Without the observability framing of state-versus-output, there is no clean signal-versus-perturbation distinction; the observer effect is observability's structural cost in coupled systems. Observability supplies the prerequisite condition: Infer internal state externally. Observer Effect operates against that background: Observation alters system. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.

The observer effect presupposes observability because the perturbation by measurement is the cost paid against the inference-of-state-from-output discipline.


The observer effect names the structural fact that measurement couples the apparatus to the system, so the value read is not the value that would have obtained absent measurement, and subsequent behavior is altered. That is reflexivity instantiated at the measurement interface: the observation enters as an input to what is observed, creating a self-referential loop between knower and known. It is the physical, measurement-side specialization of the broader reflexive pattern.

The Observer Effect is a kind of reflexivity: the act of observing a system feeds back as a perturbation of the system observed.


Competition is the standing arena; offensive_action a posture within it. Presupposes, not is a specialization of (competition can hold between non-agents; offensive_action requires a deliberate agentic move). Competition supplies the prerequisite condition: Rivalrous pursuit of a scarce prize where one party's gain is another's loss. Offensive Action operates against that background: Commit to unilateral first movement that forces opponents into a reactive posture, letting the initiator set the tempo, location, and terms of engagement and so control the agenda. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.


Bias supplies the genus: Systematic, directional error distinct from random noise. Omission Bias preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: When acting and not acting carry similar expected outcomes, decision-makers systematically prefer inaction, judging a harm caused by acting as worse than an equal-or-greater harm caused by failing to act, because commission feels more causally and morally attributable than omission. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.

Omission Bias is a specialization of Bias, retaining the parent's defining structure while adding the child's specific commitments.


Ontology presupposes set and membership because specifying what there is — basic categories, identity criteria, dependency relations — requires the prior conceptual apparatus of treating entities-considered-together as objects of reasoning. To say a kind exists is to circumscribe the collection of its members under a criterion of inclusion; to give an identity criterion is to fix the membership relation. Without set-and-membership's general structure of collection-as-first-class-object distinct from its members and its defining predicate, the ontologist has no framework for stating which entities populate which categories and how those categories relate.

Ontology presupposes set and membership because inventorying what exists requires the apparatus of collections, members, and inclusion criteria.


Modularity is 'the prerequisite substrate — a system carved into parts with hidden internals'; OCP layers a directional change-stance (sealed kernel and additive surface and gate) onto a modular partition. Presupposes modularity; adds the additive-vs-destructive asymmetry. Modularity supplies the prerequisite condition: Breaks systems into smaller units. Open-Closed Principle operates against that background: Harden a stable kernel against modification and route all change through an open extension surface. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.


The mechanism defines at least inactive, active-open, completed, and abandoned or substituted states, with adoption entering the active state and recognized completion or termination leaving it. State and State Transition supplies the state space, current-state sufficiency, and trigger-governed transitions. The child adds an agentic goal, maintained return priority, and release semantics.

Open-Goal Persistence is a state-and-transition pattern specialized to an adopted goal held in an active state until an explicit release transition fires.


Interoperability supplies the genus: Systems function together. Open Publication for Interoperability preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Publishing artifacts in an addressable, license-clear, machine-readable, openly accessible, versioned form so other communities can build on them without per-use negotiation. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.

Open Publication for Interoperability is a specialization of Interoperability, retaining the parent's defining structure while adding the child's specific commitments.


Open Publication for Interoperability contains License as Coordination as its license-clear constituent: the published terms preauthorize a class of downstream uses and replace bilateral permission bargaining. The larger publication bundle additionally requires addressability, reusable form, public access, and version discipline, so the license mechanism is a necessary part rather than the whole pattern.

Open publication contains a standing reuse license as one of its five defining publication commitments.


Open_publication is a facilitating mechanism/tactic that promotes convergence. Sub-case of the genus. Standardization supplies the genus: The act or process by which independent parties converge on a single shared specification, format, or interface — agreement on a common norm rather than the benefits that follow from it. Open Publication for Interoperability preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Publishing artifacts in an addressable, license-clear, machine-readable, openly accessible, versioned form so other communities can build on them without per-use negotiation. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


Overextension is the story of where a margin vanishes: backbone capacity minus frontier demand evaluated at expected shock reaches zero. It presupposes a margin/buffer and specifies which one (frontier-to-backbone) and how it is consumed. frames margin_of_safety as the static buffer it dynamizes. Margin of Safety supplies the prerequisite condition: Buffer capacity. Operational Overextension operates against that background: A system advances a frontier of activity faster than the supporting backbone that sustains it can keep up, so the leading edge becomes brittle and fails on its next shock — the failure lying in the frontier-to-backbone ratio, not the frontier itself. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


Iteration supplies the genus: Repeats steps to refine outcomes. Operational Period preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A bounded interval in which a plan is committed, executed, and reassessed at its boundary. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.

Operational Period is a specialization of Iteration, retaining the parent's defining structure while adding the child's specific commitments.


Effective reach is set by a tip's DEPENDENCY on a support tail whose capacity decays with distance/duration (the tip can act only as far as the tail reaches). Dependency supplies the prerequisite condition: Directed relation in which one element relies on another being present, prior, compatible, or supplied, with a specifiable failure mode if the condition is unmet. Operational Reach operates against that background: Effective action extends only as far as the support tail can sustain it. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


Operationalization is the specific refinement of an intent-level specification into an executable procedure BOUND BY a correctness contract (making 'does this procedure satisfy this spec?' meaningful), with many-to-one freedom. is a specialization of refinement (adding detail), specialized to the what->how lowering under a discharge contract. Refinement supplies the genus: Iteratively improving a candidate solution toward adequacy through repeated cycles of evaluation and adjustment that narrow the gap to a target, rather than deriving the answer in one shot. Operationalization preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A specification of what is wanted is mechanically lowered into an executable how, under a correctness contract relating the two. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.


Opportunity asymmetry is a specialization of asymmetry: the relation between an agent and the set of actions available to them fails the swap-test — exchanging two agents' positions changes what each can do, not merely what each receives. It inherits asymmetry's directed-imbalance structure and particularizes it to the action-set case where the relevant asymmetry is in feasibility rather than outcome, distinguishing it from outcome inequality and locating the structural barrier at the access stage.

Opportunity asymmetry is a kind of asymmetry in which agents' feasible action sets differ systematically by position and endowment.


Opportunity cost is the value of the best alternative forgone when a choice is made — it is constituted by the act of choosing one option and thereby closing off others. Without a decision, no path is selected, no alternatives are foreclosed, and the comparative magnitude has nothing to attach to. Decision supplies the moment when deliberation collapses into commitment and other paths are closed; opportunity cost is the economic accounting of what that closure cost in terms of best forgone alternative, so it presupposes the decisional commitment.

Opportunity cost presupposes decision because the forgone best alternative only has standing as a cost when a choice has actually been made.


Opportunity cost is the value of the best alternative forgone when a choice is made, and it is meaningful only under constraint: if a resource were unlimited or the alternatives were not mutually exclusive, no alternative would actually be forgone. Scarcity supplies exactly this precondition — a finite supply insufficient to satisfy all simultaneous demands, so that allocating to one use necessarily denies another. Opportunity cost is the accounting consequence of that exclusivity, presupposing scarcity as the structural condition that makes forgone alternatives a real cost.

Opportunity cost presupposes scarcity because the cost of the best forgone alternative only arises when resources are insufficient to do both.


An optimal stopping rule repeats a continue/halt DECISION over a stream under uncertainty and trade-off; it presupposes the decision prime (committing to one alternative under uncertainty) and specializes it to the sequential, irreversible, order-matters halt structure. distinct from a one-shot decision because alternatives arrive in sequence. Decision supplies the prerequisite condition: Committing to one alternative from a set under uncertainty and trade-off, collapsing open deliberation into a chosen path and foreclosing the others. Optimal Stopping Rule operates against that background: A rule maps a sequence of observations to a halt decision, trading the cost of stopping too early against stopping too late. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


Optimism bias is a specialization of bias. Specifically, it instantiates the systematic-displacement-from-the-true-value pattern in the self-prediction subclass: individuals' probability estimates for personal positive outcomes are consistently above base rates, estimates for personal negative outcomes consistently below, and belief updates asymmetric. It exhibits bias's defining signature -- a sign and direction surviving repeated estimation -- with the offset traced to motivated self-relevant projection and stronger for self than for comparable others, distinguishing it within the broader bias catalog.

Optimism bias is a specialization of bias in which the systematic displacement favors better-than-true probability estimates for one's own outcomes.


Optionality is the structure of bounded downside and preserved upside choice, which requires the underlying distinction between paths that lock in commitment and paths that retain flexibility. Without the reversibility-irreversibility dimension, there would be no asymmetry to capture: the value of holding an option is precisely the value of remaining on the reversible side until exercise. The premium paid for an option is the price of avoiding premature irreversibility, so the parent prime's distinction is logically prior to optionality's payoff structure.

Optionality presupposes reversibility and irreversibility because an option's value depends on the asymmetry between flexible upside and bounded committed downside.


Optionality is the asymmetric value of holding a right without a duty — bounded downside, unbounded upside — preserved by paying a premium now for the privilege to decide later. That asymmetric value depends entirely on future states being unknown: if the future were certain, there would be no reason to keep choice open and the option would collapse to its expected exercise value. Uncertainty — the structural condition of incomplete knowledge about future states — is the very substrate that makes preserved maneuverability worth paying for, so optionality cannot exist without it.

Optionality presupposes uncertainty because the asymmetric value of an option only exists when future states are not yet known.


Order assigns a binary relation that says which element precedes which, subject to axioms like transitivity and antisymmetry. That relation cannot be established without Comparison as the underlying operation: pairs of elements must be brought under a shared dimension, aligned, and assigned a same/different or greater/lesser verdict. Order is comparison's outcome stabilized into a structured ranking over a whole set, so without the comparison operation no ordering relation can be constructed or checked.

Order presupposes Comparison: a precedence relation requires the ability to place elements under a shared frame and read off a relation.


Order presupposes relation because an order is, formally, a binary relation on a set obeying additional structural axioms: transitivity together with reflexivity and antisymmetry, or irreflexivity and asymmetry. Without the prior availability of relation as a designated pattern of association picking out which tuples stand together, there is no substrate on which the order axioms can act. Relation supplies the general apparatus of well-defined association; order adds the specific axioms that turn that association into a ranking with precedence.

Order presupposes relation because a ranking is a particular binary relation satisfying transitivity together with reflexivity or irreflexivity and antisymmetry or asymmetry.


An order is a binary relation on a set, governed by axioms (reflexivity, antisymmetry, transitivity, or their strict variants) that quantify over that set's elements. The relation has no domain to act on unless Set and Membership has already fixed which items are in play and which are not. Order is therefore a structure layered onto a set: it presupposes the set as a first-class collection of distinct elements before it can rank, sort, or compare them.

Order presupposes Set and Membership: a precedence relation is defined over the elements of some set whose membership is already settled.


Organizational culture is the system of shared beliefs, values, norms, tacit assumptions, rituals, and interpretive frames that guides acceptable behavior within an organization. Social norms are therefore explicit internal constituents: they encode expectations about how members should behave and attach approval, disapproval, or organizational consequences to compliance and deviation. Culture contains additional elements, but without shared normative expectations it would lose the behavioral guidance and acceptability judgments central to its live definition.

Shared social norms are internal constituents of organizational culture alongside beliefs, values, assumptions, rituals, and interpretive frames.


Ornamentation presupposes form and content because the very move of applying decorative detail to a functional substrate requires the form-content distinction: the substrate carries the primary function (content), and the ornament elaborates its presentation (form) without necessarily altering what the object does. Without the dualism that separates what-is-conveyed from how-it-is-presented, ornament collapses into structure and the discretionary aesthetic dimension disappears. Ornamentation operates precisely in the form-axis space the parent prime opens, while leaving content axis largely intact.

Ornamentation presupposes form and content because decorative elaboration adds form to a substrate without altering its primary functional content.


Every live Oscillation has a state that returns to similar values at a characteristic interval; damped, noisy, driven, and slowly modulated cases remain within Periodicity's approximate or conditional branches. Oscillation adds alternation around a reference, a restoring tendency, and storage or momentum that carries the state past the reference. Rotation, pulse trains, and externally scheduled stage cycles remain periodic without being oscillations.

Oscillation is Periodicity specialized to recurring variation around a reference under restoring dynamics.


Preference is the umbrella; the own-payoff-only agent is recovered at zero cross-weights (a measure-zero point). Preference supplies the genus: Agent's ordering over a choice set on some evaluative dimension. Other-Regarding Preferences preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: An agent's evaluation of outcomes depends not only on its own payoff but on the payoffs of other agents. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.


The scope detector exists to catch the regime exit that the primary apparatus cannot reliably recognize from its ordinary confidence output. Remove the calibration-versus-deployment boundary and the deferral mechanism no longer has an out-of-competence condition to detect.

Out-of-distribution detection presupposes the risk of applying a calibrated decision apparatus beyond the regime in which its competence was established.


Outlier leverage is a property of an aggregation rule's non-resistance (low breakdown point) to extremes applied to a tailed distribution — it presupposes an aggregation (mean, slope, ratio, ranking) whose result a few points dominate. Built on the collapse-to-a-summary operation.


Inductive Reasoning supplies the prerequisite condition: Specific to general inference. Overfitting operates against that background: Poor generalization. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.

Overfitting presupposes Inductive Reasoning, whose structure must already obtain for the child mechanism to be meaningful or operational.


Increasing model flexibility can reduce bias while amplifying sensitivity to sample noise, so the child occupies one failure corner of the coupled capacity problem. Trade-offs owns the two-sided structure; Overfitting adds the train-test generalization gap and the capacity-reduction remedy.

Overfitting is the high-capacity, high-variance endpoint of the bias-variance trade-off already canonically owned by Trade-offs.


Oversight capacity is the structural invariant that any single overseeing entity can handle only a finite number of direct sub-units before coordination and decision quality decay. The binding source of that finitude is bounded attention — the inherently scarce cognitive resource that must be allocated across reports, signals, and decisions. Attention names the gating mechanism by which a limited resource is selectively assigned across competing inputs; oversight capacity is the management-side consequence of attention's scarcity, presupposing the attentional constraint as the upstream cause of any span-of-control limit.

Oversight capacity presupposes attention because the finite span of supervision is grounded in bounded cognitive attentional resources.