A local_optimum is one POINT (where local search halts) on the landscape; the optimization landscape is the whole country (basins, ridges, plateaus, connectivity). Part-to-whole — landscape is the broader frame. Optimization Landscape supplies the genus: The topology of a value function over a configuration space, whose shape predicts which search strategies will succeed or get stuck. Local Optimum preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A point best within its neighborhood but not across the whole landscape. 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.


Local Sequence Legality is a specialization of Local-to-Global Aggregation, retaining the parent's defining structure while adding the child's specific commitments.

Local-to-Global Aggregation supplies the genus: Locally checkable properties promote to a global verdict under an explicit aggregation discipline. Local Sequence Legality preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: The acceptability of an arrangement of units drawn from a finite inventory is decided by local constraints over short windows of context, prior to and independent of higher-level interpretation, so global legality is the composition of local verdicts. 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.


Locality of reference is a kind of recurrence in which recently or nearby accessed items reappear with predictable frequency.

Locality of reference is a specialization of recurrence: it asserts that access events reappear across time (temporal locality: recently-used items return soon) and space (spatial locality: items near a used one are used next). It inherits recurrence's structural commitment that patterns reappear with predictable spacing, particularized to the access-distribution domain. The working-set phenomenon is precisely the autocorrelated-recurrence signature in which past usage predicts future usage at non-uniform rates.


Locality of reference presupposes heavy-tailed distributions because clustered access patterns produce heavy-tailed access frequencies across the address space.

Locality of reference presupposes heavy-tailed distributions because the empirical regularity that a small slowly-drifting working set absorbs the vast majority of accesses is a heavy-tailed access-frequency distribution: a few addresses account for most references while the bulk receive almost none. Without heavy tails' signature of a few extremes dominating sums and averages, locality reduces to uniform access. The working-set phenomenon, page-fault rates, and cache-hit predictions all rest on the same skewed distribution heavy-tailed analysis describes. Heavy-Tailed Distributions supplies the prerequisite condition: Distributions where rare, extreme events carry most of the weight. Locality Of Reference operates against that background: Accesses cluster in time and space, making prediction and caching effective. 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.


Spatial indexing exploits locality of reference (the access-pattern property) for its output-sensitive payoff. After the computer_science frame is stripped away, the retained structural roles are those of Spatial Indexing: Organizing items by position in a space so retrieval, neighborhood, and range queries become geometric and output-sensitive. Locality Of Reference adds the local frame and commitments expressed in its identity: Accesses cluster in time and space, making prediction and caching effective. 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.


Located_in is a relation but the specific mereotopological within-a-region-at-a-time relation with its own inference rules (no transitivity into parthood, time-indexed, non-constitutive) the generic relation lacks. Relation supplies the genus: Describes associations or dependencies. Located-In Relation preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: One entity is situated within the region of another at a time, without that entity being a part of, or strictly contained by, the location. 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.


Lock-in presupposes increasing returns because the accumulating non-transferable value that makes switching costly is the increasing-returns mechanism.

Lock-in is the state in which the forward-looking cost of switching from a current commitment exceeds the cost of continuing, because investment, learning, network growth, or standard adoption has accumulated value that does not transfer to alternatives. This accumulation is precisely the increasing-returns pattern: marginal benefit rising as the cumulative state variable grows, with each successive unit making the option more attractive. Without increasing returns supplying the rising-advantage curve, no asymmetry would build between the current commitment and clean-slate alternatives, and lock-in would not arise.


Lock-in is a specific kind of path dependence where past commitments make the present forward cost of switching exceed continuation.

Lock-in is a specialization of path dependence. The general pattern is that outcomes depend on the specific historical trajectory of choices, with past decisions foreclosing alternatives and accumulating constraints. Lock-in instantiates this with a particular structural form: history is encoded as accumulated non-transferable value such that, from the present, the cost of switching exceeds the cost of continuing with the suboptimal commitment. It is path dependence with the specific signature that the path's encoded constraints are forward-cost-binding rather than merely contingent.


Lock_in is the TERMINAL committed state a ratchet climbs toward (staircase-to-landing); the ratchet is the incremental process of cheap captured advances. Lower confidence than the path_dependence parent. Ratchet Effect supplies the genus: Direction-asymmetric coupling plus a locking element produces accumulating one-way displacement under bidirectional forcing. Lock-In preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Forward-looking cost of switching exceeds the forward-looking cost of staying, even when a superior alternative exists. 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.


Log encoding is a representational CHOICE — re-expressing a wide-dynamic-range magnitude on a log axis so equal internal steps mean equal ratios; the commitment lives in the axis (the representation), not the data. is-a representation, specialized to ratio-scale re-encoding under wide range + proportional importance.


Logging is the append-only, event-time, deferred-reading mechanism that makes a system's internal history externally inspectable — it presupposes/serves observability (infer internal state externally), as its retrospective record-now-interpret-later instance. Observability supplies the prerequisite condition: Infer internal state externally. Logging operates against that background: Record events as they occur, append-only, for inspection after the fact. 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.


Logistic Growth presupposes a finite ceiling that bounds the trajectory and supplies the remaining-capacity term in its multiplicative brake.

The logistic equation is distinguished from exponential growth by a finite K that the trajectory approaches asymptotically. Boundedness supplies the fixed finite envelope; Logistic Growth adds endogenous growth, a multiplicative remaining-fraction brake, two fixed points, and a sigmoid time path.


Logistic Growth contains the coupled positive engine and negative ceiling brake whose loop interaction produces its sigmoid trajectory.

Growth proportional to the current quantity supplies reinforcing feedback; proximity to the finite ceiling supplies a multiplicative balancing feedback. Their conjunction produces takeoff, inflection, and decelerating saturation, while Feedback alone commits to neither a ceiling nor a logistic form.


Logistics Overreach is typically a specialization of Bottleneck, retaining the parent's defining structure while adding the child's specific commitments.

Bottleneck supplies the genus: The single limiting stage that caps an entire system's throughput. Logistics Overreach preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: An operating front advances faster than the trailing supply line that sustains it, and because the lengthening line itself consumes delivery, beyond a crossover point further advance strands what has already advanced rather than extending reach. 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.


Loss and damage operates on a pre-existing risk exposure — it is the post-defense slice of a threat distribution. Presupposes risk; the 0.88 escape_and_leakage neighbor is the scope-narrower sibling, not the parent.


Loss aversion is a specialization of preference in which the ordering is reference-dependent and weighs losses more than equivalent gains.

Loss aversion is a kind of preference specialized by a reference-dependent, asymmetric value function: outcomes below the reference point are coded as losses and weighted more heavily than equivalent gains above it. It inherits preference's general commitment to an ordering over a choice set on an evaluative dimension, and supplies the specific case where the evaluative dimension is gain/loss relative to a reference point and the ordering relation systematically privileges loss avoidance — producing reproducible deviations from expected-utility predictions in framing, endowment pricing, and status-quo bias.


Loss aversion is the specific shape asymmetry takes in value perception, where losses weigh more heavily than equivalent gains.

Asymmetry names the structural property of a relation whose two sides are not interchangeable — swap the positions and something changes. Loss aversion is the specific shape this pattern takes around a reference point in the value function: subjective weight on a loss of size x exceeds the weight on a gain of the same size by a factor of roughly 1.5 to 2.5, producing a kinked value function. It is a structurally-particularized instance of directed imbalance whose specific diagnostic is the failed swap-test between gain frame and loss frame at the reference point.


Loss aversion is reference-point dependence specialized by a value function whose loss-side response is steeper than its gain-side response. Both evaluate outcomes as signed departures from a movable baseline and predict changed valuation when that baseline moves while the outcome is held fixed. Loss aversion requires unequal weighting, with negative departures exerting more influence than equal positive departures; reference-point dependence alone is silent on slope symmetry.


Mach's Principle is a kind of reflexivity: a body's inertia is shaped by the total mass distribution it is itself part of.

Mach's Principle holds that inertia is not intrinsic to a body but arises from its relation to the total matter distribution in the universe, so a body's resistance to acceleration is co-constituted by the very cosmos that includes it. That is a specialization of reflexivity: the system's behavior is determined by a structural feature in which the system is itself embedded, so the body's inertial state is set by a whole it is part of and acts back upon, instantiating the self-referential coupling that defines reflexivity.


Mach's principle presupposes relation because it grounds inertia in a body's relation to the total matter distribution.

Mach's principle presupposes relation because its entire claim is that inertia is not intrinsic to a body but arises from how the body stands in association with the rest of the universe's matter. Without the prior availability of a well-defined association-between-elements that can hold across distance and configuration, there is nothing for inertial structure to depend on. Relation supplies the general apparatus of specifying which entities stand together under a designated link; Mach's principle imports that apparatus and asserts that the inertial link is the one that constitutes mass.


Mach's principle presupposes frame of reference because relational inertia requires that what counts as non-accelerating be defined by a frame fixed by matter.

Mach's principle presupposes frame of reference because its relational claim about inertia is precisely a claim about which frames count as inertial: in the Machian view, the local inertial frame is determined by the distribution of matter rather than by an absolute space. Without the prior availability of a frame of reference as a chosen coordinate system relative to which accelerations are defined, there is nothing for matter to fix and no question of what makes a frame non-accelerating. Frame supplies the structural slot that Mach's principle fills with a relational determinant.


Maintenance presupposes homeostasis because sustaining intended function against entropy and wear requires a regulating mechanism tracking variables against bands.

Maintenance is the sustained activity of preserving intended function against entropy, wear, and environmental change — working ahead of catastrophic failure. The activity presupposes that there is a specifiable intended function with characteristic variables that drift under degradation and corrective actions that return those variables toward acceptable bands. Homeostasis supplies that architecture: sensor-comparator-actuator closure that holds key variables within bands against disturbance. Without an underlying homeostatic loop tracking system state against a reference, maintenance has no target condition to preserve and no signal of drift to act on.


Maintenance_rehearsal is the STRICT SUBSET of maintenance whose only intervention is bare re-assertion (no repair/replace/upgrade), carrying two load-bearing inequalities (refresh-period<decay-period, refresh-cost<<storage-cost) the parent does not name. Maintenance supplies the genus: Sustained preventive work that keeps a system's intended function intact against inevitable degradation, acting ahead of failure rather than repairing after it. Maintenance Rehearsal preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Holding a decay-prone state above its disappearance threshold by repeated low-cost refresh actions that re-assert it without enriching or moving it. 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 'a specific, diagnosable pathology of aggregation' — an additive/expected-value objective whose mass concentrates on a skewed majority so the optimum is minority-blind by construction. It presupposes the aggregation operation (the average revealed as a weighting) and names its failure mode. Aggregation supplies the prerequisite condition: Deliberately collapsing many items into a single summary, choosing which information to discard to gain tractability. Majority-Dominated Aggregate Objective operates against that background: An aggregate objective whose mass lies with the majority systematically underweights an operationally important minority. 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.


Managed retreat is sacrificing peripheral ground to defend a retained core, specialized to planned withdrawal before a rising defense-cost trajectory closes the option.

Every managed retreat deliberately yields a no-longer-worth-holding position so resources and exposure can be reorganized around a defensible retained core. It adds the rising defense-cost trajectory, an explicit threshold, voluntary prior timing, a chosen new boundary, a sequenced migration, and support for parties exposed by the contraction.


Mandatory versus default norms is the specific shape constraint takes when rules are sorted by whether they can or cannot be opted out of.

Mandatory versus default norms is the specific shape constraint takes when the rule system distinguishes binding restrictions that cannot be waived from those that apply unless overridden. The constraint structure -- a condition that restricts the admissible set, binding for the purpose at hand -- splits into two operative modes: mandatory rules where the restriction holds absolutely, and default rules where the restriction is overrideable by explicit modification. The distinction operationalizes choice-architecture: which constraints are hard floors versus which are flexible-but-sticky starting points.


Maneuver contains Positional Advantage as the value realized by occupying the better position reached by the move.

Maneuver is the action of changing position in a value-graded state space. Positional Advantage is the value conferred by the favorable position reached: leverage, reach, defensibility, or optionality that arises from location rather than force at the point. That realized advantage is an internal term of the maneuver's full signature, not the taxonomic genus of the repositioning act. Remove the value differential and the move becomes mere relocation rather than maneuver.


'A manifold ADDS to a topological space the crucial extra: a system of local flat charts glued by smooth transition maps. Every manifold has an underlying topology, but topology alone is not a manifold.' Manifold presupposes topology and adds chart structure. Topology supplies the prerequisite condition: Studies properties preserved under deformation. Manifold operates against that background: A space that is locally flat but globally curved or topologically non-trivial. 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.


Role capture is 'a species of' the agency problem — the specific, sharp case where the agent's reward gradient points toward SUSTAINING the problem the role exists to remove, plus the covert-manufacture commitment and counterfactual-demand signature. agency_problem is the genus. Agency Problem supplies the genus: Misaligned incentives. Manufactured Dependency for Role Capture preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: An agent covertly sustains a problem to keep occupying the valued role attached to solving it. 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.


Margin of safety is a specialization of reserve in which the surplus is the quantitative gap between expected demand and the system's failure threshold.

Margin of safety is a specialization of reserve in which the surplus is the explicit, quantified gap between the system's nominal expected demand and its maximum permissible limit, sized to absorb modeling uncertainty without crossing the failure threshold. It inherits reserve's general structure of deliberately held capacity available for variation or shock, and specializes by fixing the form to an engineered ratio, percentage, or absolute clearance and the justification to the consequences of failure. It renders designer uncertainty as explicit margin rather than implicit optimism, making robustness a quantitative design parameter.


Marginal analysis presupposes optimization because the incremental comparison of costs and benefits is the first-order-condition apparatus of finding optima.

Marginal analysis evaluates decisions by comparing the incremental cost and benefit of small changes, with the canonical result that at an interior optimum marginal benefit equals marginal cost. The whole technique presupposes an optimization problem in place — an objective being maximized or minimized over a choice set subject to constraints. Optimization supplies the well-defined search for the best element; marginal analysis presupposes that search and provides the calculus-based first-order-condition method that locates interior optima. Without an optimization target, the marginal calculation has nothing to characterize.


Marginal utility presupposes preference because the additional satisfaction from one more unit is a derivative of the agent's preference-grounded utility function.

Marginal utility presupposes preference because it is formally the partial derivative of the agent's utility function with respect to one good, and that utility function exists only as a representation of the agent's preference ordering over consumption bundles. Without preference as the underlying ordering on the choice set, there is no utility function whose marginal change can be measured, no trade-off rate, and no scarce-budget allocation problem. Preference supplies the ordering primitive; marginal utility is the local rate at which moving along that ordering changes value as quantity changes.


Marginal utility is the specific shape marginal analysis takes when the incremental quantity is the additional satisfaction from one more unit consumed.

Marginal analysis is incremental reasoning that compares the marginal cost and marginal benefit of small changes to characterize optima. Marginal utility is the particular shape this analysis takes on the consumption side: the partial derivative of a utility function with respect to one good — the additional welfare gained from one more unit — holding others fixed. It is a structurally-particularized instance of marginal reasoning whose specific quantity is the utility-function partial, providing the consumer-side magnitude that gets equated to price ratios at the optimum.


Markedness is the specific shape asymmetry takes when a linguistic opposition designates one member as unmarked default and the other as marked.

Markedness is the structurally-particularized form asymmetry takes in linguistic oppositions: the two sides of a binary contrast (singular/plural, voiced/voiceless, present/past) fail the swap-test — one is privileged as default (shorter, more frequent, broader distribution) while the other carries specifying morphology. It inherits asymmetry's directed-imbalance structure and particularizes it to the formal opposition where the privileged side is the morphologically simpler default and the marked side is the specified specialization.


The blanket is a boundary, but a specific testable one — exactly the minimal set whose observation renders interior conditionally independent of exterior, with a screening test and minimality criterion attached. A specialization of boundary. Boundary supplies the genus: Defines system limits. Markov Blanket preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: The minimal set of variables that, once observed, render a target conditionally independent of everything else — the system's statistical interface with its environment. 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.


Markov Decision Processes presuppose Decision: an MDP is machinery for selecting policies, which are decision rules over states.

A Markov Decision Process formalizes sequential choice as the selection, at each state, of an action that commits future trajectory and forecloses alternatives. Its solution concept is a policy that picks actions from a feasible set under uncertainty and trade-off. That apparatus is meaningless without Decision as the underlying act: MDPs presuppose the existence of an agent that selects one alternative from a set under constraint, then assemble probability and reward structure around that primitive.


Markov Decision Processes presuppose Probability: the transition kernel and expected-reward objective are defined as probabilistic objects.

An MDP's transition kernel P(s' | s, a) is a calibrated probability assignment over next states, and its optimality criterion is expected cumulative discounted reward. Both depend on Probability's apparatus — numerical measures obeying additivity, normalization, and conditioning — to combine uncertain outcomes coherently. Without probability the kernel collapses to an unspecified relation and expectation has no meaning, so the MDP framework cannot be stated or solved except as a structure built on top of probability.


Markov Decision Processes presupposes state and state transition because the MDP tuple is built on a state space with Markov-property transitions.

An MDP is the tuple (S, A, P, R, γ) specifying states, actions, a stochastic transition kernel, rewards, and a discount factor — with the Markov property that next-state depends only on current state and action. The framework directly instantiates the state-and-state-transition architecture: state space, transition relation, and history-compressed-into-state. Without that underlying state-machine substrate, there would be no S over which P could be a kernel and no Markov closure on which policy optimization depends. MDPs add actions and rewards atop the bare state-transition structure.


A Markov process presupposes probability because the transition rule is specified as conditional probabilities over a sample space of next states.

A Markov process presupposes probability because its defining apparatus — a transition rule giving the conditional distribution of the next state given the present — is itself a probability assignment obeying additivity, normalization, and conditioning. Without probability's coherence rules quantifying uncertainty over sample spaces, the memorylessness claim (future is independent of past given present) would have no content: the screening-off relation is precisely a conditional-independence statement that lives inside the probabilistic framework Kolmogorov axiomatized.


Markov process presupposes state and state transition because the memorylessness property operates on a state space with transition rules.

A Markov process is defined by the memorylessness property: the future evolution is conditionally independent of the entire past given the current state. This commitment is meaningful only against a state-and-state-transition substrate — a state space and a transition rule. The Markov property is precisely the closure condition the state-transition framework already invokes as the principle that history is compressed into state. The Markov process makes this closure stochastic and rigorous, but it presupposes the underlying state-transition architecture as its operational ground.


Markov Process is a specialization of Stochastic Process, retaining the parent's defining structure while adding the child's specific commitments.

Stochastic Process supplies the genus: A quantity indexed (usually by time) whose evolution is governed by randomness — an indexed family of random variables sharing one probability law. Markov Process preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Future state depends only on the present, not the full history. 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.


Mass is a specialized allocation move: concentrate a finite resource at a decisive point against a threshold-shaped response curve, rather than spread it evenly. It is allocation (assign limited supply) plus a response-curve-shape bet + locator + vulnerability cost. Sibling of economy_of_force under allocation.


Mastery learning is a specific pedagogy that fixes the achievement threshold and varies time and support until every learner meets it.

Mastery learning is a specialization of pedagogy whose distinctive move is inverting the conventional time-fixed model: it holds the achievement standard constant at a high threshold and lets time, feedback, and instructional support vary so that no learner advances with persistent deficits. It inherits pedagogy's commitment to deliberately structuring the learner's encounter with content for durable capability change, and adds the specific architecture of diagnostic formative assessment, immediate remediation, and alternative paths organized around an unconditional unit-by-unit mastery requirement.


Mathematical Induction presupposes Well-Foundedness (Well-Ordering), whose structure must already obtain for the child mechanism to be meaningful or operational.

Well-Foundedness (Well-Ordering) supplies the prerequisite condition: Prevents infinite descent. Mathematical Induction operates against that background: Proof method across natural numbers. 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.


Maturity mismatch is the TEMPORAL dimension of coupling between two sides of a system — how fast each can respond — a specialized two-clock duration-ratio coupling. itself contrasts it with bare coupling (strength) as the temporal specialization. Coupling supplies the genus: Interdependence among subsystems. Maturity Mismatch preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A system holds two-sided commitments whose durations differ — a short side that must be repeatedly refreshed against a long side that cannot accelerate — so it fails when refreshing stops, not because it lacks resources but because they are locked in durations longer than the moment requires. 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 Measure is aggregation specialized to collapsing every admissible subset to a non-negative size under countable additivity over disjoint parts.

Every Measure maps a potentially many-element subset to one retained feature, its size, while suppressing the subset's remaining granular structure. It therefore satisfies Aggregation's many-to-one collapse. Measure adds a base space, an admissible family of subsets, non-negativity, empty-set zero, and countable additivity over disjoint parts. Medians, maxima, votes, and nonlinear roll-ups show why Aggregation is broader, not why any Measure falls outside it.


Measure strictly presupposes Set and Membership because its domain is an admissible family of subsets of a base set.

Every Measure begins with a base set, a family of its subsets closed under the required set operations, and a rule assigning size to each admissible subset. Without elements, membership, subsets, complement, and union, neither the σ-algebra nor countable additivity can be stated. Set and Membership is therefore a constitutive dependency, not merely a frequent implementation.


Measurement and disturbance presupposes uncertainty because the trade-off between information gained and disturbance incurred is fundamentally an uncertainty-management problem.

Measurement and disturbance names the structural challenge that every measurement couples the system to an apparatus and thereby alters what is being measured, producing a trade-off between information gained and disturbance incurred. This presupposes uncertainty: the structural condition of incomplete knowledge about a system's state, with the commitment to distinguish what is known from what is not. The measurement act is a controlled reduction of epistemic uncertainty that introduces new uncertainty about the perturbed state. Without uncertainty's framing of incomplete knowledge as the target of inquiry, there is no information-versus-disturbance trade-off to characterize.


Measurement and disturbance presupposes observability because the back-action perturbation matters only against the standard of inferring true internal state from outputs.

Measurement and disturbance presupposes observability because the disturbance-versus-information trade-off is intelligible only relative to observability's framing: a measurement is supposed to recover internal state, and disturbance is the systematic alteration the measurement coupling imposes on that state. Without observability's commitment to reconstructing state from outputs, there is no baseline against which to count the back-action as systematic perturbation of the inference target. The disturbance is a structural cost paid against the observability budget.


Measurement uncertainty and observational noise presuppose observability because they characterize the gap between true state and what outputs reveal about it.

Measurement uncertainty and observational noise presuppose observability because they name the irreducible gap between a system's true internal state and what external measurements can recover. Observability frames the question -- can internal state be inferred from outputs over time -- and noise is the corruption layer between state and output that degrades that inference. Without the observability framing of state-versus-output, there is no canonical 'true value' against which instrument precision, observer error, and environmental variation count as displacement; noise becomes meaningful only as deviation from the inferable signal.


Measurement's own structural signature names the uncertainty envelope as one of its seven constituent links; measurement is the whole that decomposes into this part. After the statistics_experimental_design frame is stripped away, the retained structural roles are those of Measurement: Mapping a target's attribute onto a scale via an instrument and procedure, yielding a value-plus-uncertainty tied to a unit and frame. Measurement Uncertainty and Observational Noise adds the local frame and commitments expressed in its identity: Measurement noise arises from instrument and observation limits. 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.


Mechanism design and incentive compatibility are interdefinable complements — the field that engineers for the property and the property the engineering targets.

Mechanism design and incentive compatibility are interdefinable structural complements: mechanism design is the engineering discipline that searches for rule structures implementing desired outcomes under private information and self-interest, while incentive compatibility is precisely the property such a rule structure must satisfy — that each agent's best response coincides with the designer's intended action. Neither is prior. The field is defined by the property it pursues; the property is defined by its role in the field. Each makes sense only with the other already in view, as the question and its required answer.


Mediator availability constraint is the specific shape a bottleneck takes when expert mentorship or authoritative feedback is the scarce stage capping system throughput.

Mediator availability constraint is the bottleneck-particularized commitment for systems that depend on expert mediation: the scarce resource is expert time per learner, and the slowest stage in the learning pipeline is the mentoring or feedback step. Where bottleneck names the single binding capacity limit governing aggregate throughput generally, the mediator variant fixes the identity of the limiting element as human expert capacity, with the structural consequence that scaling material resources does not relieve the constraint.


Memoing is event-time durable logging specialized to the reasoning trajectory that produces a parallel primary artifact.

Logging records temporally ordered, context-bearing events when they occur for deferred inspection. Memoing inherits that whole structure and narrows the recorded events to interpretations, alternatives, decisions, doubts, and frame shifts arising while a separate artifact is produced. Its parallel-artifact placement, signal filter, and emphasis on why are the differentia; they do not change the underlying record-now/read-later genus.


The memory palace is a specialization of schema in which the spatial schema of a familiar route serves as a structured scaffold for binding items to locations.

The memory palace is a specialization of schema in which the schema deployed is specifically a familiar spatial route, with its sequenced locations providing pre-built slots into which items-to-remember are imaginatively placed. It inherits the general schema commitment of a type-level cognitive structure with slots, default values, and expected relations that scaffold encoding and retrieval. Its specialization is to fix the schema's slots to spatial locations along a well-known path and to bind discrete content through vivid multisensory associations that exploit the route's pre-existing organization.


A mental model is a specialization of representation in which the medium is an individual reasoner's internal cognitive structure.

A mental model is a specialization of representation in which the medium is an individual reasoner's internal cognitive structure and the target is some domain whose behavior must be predicted, explained, or intervened upon. It inherits representation's commitment to selective faithfulness — preserving the entities and causal rules that matter while dropping detail — and specializes by locating the medium in working memory and requiring tractability for mental simulation. The model is held by a particular mind, revisable on prediction failure, and supports the characteristic what-if running that distinguishes it from external representations.


The mere exposure effect presupposes recurrence because the liking shift only emerges after a stimulus reappears across multiple encounters.

The mere exposure effect is the empirical pattern that repeated encounters with a stimulus produce positive attitudinal change, with liking growing roughly logarithmically in the number of exposures. The phenomenon presupposes recurrence as its enabling structure: a single one-shot encounter cannot produce the effect. Recurrence — the structural property by which a pattern or event reappears across instances, often with predictable spacing — is exactly what the repetition counts on. The dose-response curve operates on the recurrence pattern, so mere exposure cannot function without reappearance as its substrate.


Message passing enforces modular boundaries — autonomous private state interacting only through interfaces is modular decoupling realized. Modularity supplies the prerequisite condition: Breaks systems into smaller units. Message Passing operates against that background: Autonomous holders of private state interact only through discrete addressed messages over intermediating channels. 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.


Meta-symbolic reflection is the specific shape reflexivity takes when a symbol system is used to refer to and analyze itself.

Meta-symbolic reflection is the structurally-particularized form reflexivity takes in the symbolic-cognitive case: the system's self-referential apparatus is a symbol system (language, code, logic, notation) that turns its own syntax into an object of reference, often using the same system reflexively. It inherits reflexivity's structural pattern — observations or models of the system become inputs shaping the system — particularized to the case where the loop runs through symbolic self-reference rather than empirical feedback.


Metacognition is the specific shape reflexivity takes when a cognitive system represents and regulates its own cognitive processes.

Metacognition is the specific shape reflexivity takes when the system is a cognitive agent and the self-referential operation is thinking about one's own thinking — second-order representations of first-order cognitive acts that feed back to regulate them. Reflexivity supplies the underlying pattern: a system's observations or models of itself become inputs that shape its own behavior, creating a self-referential loop. Metacognition is a structurally-particularized instance: the loop runs through cognitive monitoring and control, where awareness of one's own performance regulates subsequent processing — strategy choice, study allocation, help-seeking.


Metacognition is built on a self-monitoring-and-regulation feedback loop over the agent's own cognitive processes. Feedback supplies the prerequisite condition: Outputs influence inputs. Metacognition operates against that background: Awareness of thinking processes. 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.


Metaphor is a specialization of analogy; it is structural mapping from a source to a target domain in language and conceptual thought.

Analogy is the general pattern of structural mapping between two domains in which relational roles align so that inferences in the source become candidate inferences in the target. Metaphor is the specific case in which the source domain is typically concrete and embodied, the target is typically abstract, and the mapping organizes how the target can be thought about and talked about at all. It inherits analogy's relational-alignment machinery but commits additionally to constitutive cognitive-linguistic projection — a specialization of analogy applied to thought and discourse.


Visual-artistic metaphor is a specialization of metaphor in which the source and target are mapped through visual form rather than language.

Visual-artistic metaphor is a specialization of metaphor in which the cross-domain mapping is carried by visual form, imagery, or compositional relation rather than by linguistic expression. It inherits metaphor's general structure of importing selected relations and inferences from a source domain into a target domain to support reasoning, communication, or perception, and specializes by fixing the medium of the mapping to visual transfer: one visual form stands for or illuminates another through perceived similarity, structural correspondence, or cultural convention. The conceptual content travels through the image rather than through the word.


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

Adaptation supplies the genus: Systems adjust to conditions. Metaplasticity preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A system's capacity to change is itself modulated by prior activity, so a slow second-order process governs how readily the fast first-order adaptive process can operate. 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.


Metastability is a local optimum in a dynamical/energy landscape held by a kinetic barrier, satisfying local_optimum's neighborhood-best-not-global-best definition. Local Optimum supplies the genus: A point best within its neighborhood but not across the whole landscape. Metastability preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A system persists in a locally stable configuration that is not the global optimum, held there by a barrier that routine disturbances cannot clear. 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 metasystem transition is the specific shape emergence takes when previously autonomous subsystems become integrated under a new level of control.

A metasystem transition is the structurally-particularized form emergence takes when independent or loosely-coupled subsystems coordinate through a new integrating mechanism (genetic code, nervous system, social hierarchy, market institution), producing higher-level properties impossible at the prior level. It satisfies emergence's four-part specification — lower-level constituents, higher-level phenomenon, sense of novelty, conditions — particularized by the additional commitment that integration produces a new control hierarchy rather than just a new descriptive vocabulary.


Metonymy is 'the specific sub-mechanism' of standing-for licensed by ATTACHMENT/contiguity rather than resemblance or arbitrary convention — a species of symbolic_representation (the genus). Add symbolic_representation as parent. Symbolic Representation supplies the genus: Sign-meaning link sustained by collective convention rather than resemblance or causal connection. Metonymy preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Referring to a thing via a contiguous element attached to it — part, locale, instrument, institution, address — with the substitution valid only while the contiguity holds. 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.


Every Metric is a Function Mapping from ordered pairs of objects to non-negative real distances, with metric axioms added.

A Metric is definitionally a single-valued function from pairs in a set to non-negative real numbers. It inherits Function Mapping's domain, codomain, and determinate input-output rule, then adds identity of indiscernibles, symmetry, and the triangle inequality. Functions with other domains, codomains, or constraints show only that Function Mapping is broader.


Microhistory vs. macrohistory is the specific shape scale takes when historical inquiry varies its resolution between bounded subjects and sweeping processes.

Microhistory vs. macrohistory is the specific shape scale takes in historical inquiry, where the band of analysis ranges from a single village, trial, or household over a short span (microhistory) to civilizational processes across long durations and wide geographies (macrohistory). It is a structurally-particularized instance of the recognition that properties and patterns vary with scale, with the added commitment that contingency, agency, and texture are visible at the micro band while structural regularities and long-run trends are visible at the macro band, and that neither scale dominates — they make different features available.


Removing substrate vocabulary from Microstructure leaves lower-level parts whose meso-scale relations generate macro properties not fixed by composition alone.

This is not subsumption: Microstructure names the load-bearing intermediate arrangement, while Emergence names the higher-level novelty it explains. Nevertheless, the part-interaction-to-macro-property core is universal to the prime.


Microstructure requires distinguishable constituent, intermediate, and bulk scales so the mediating arrangement is neither part inventory nor gross form.

The prime is not a kind of magnitude. Scale supplies the relative observation regimes needed to locate its subject; Microstructure adds arrangement, processing history, macro-property mediation, and composition-held-fixed counterfactuals.


The minimal modification principle presupposes modal reasoning because it constrains which alternative possible worlds count as legitimate counterfactual scenarios.

The minimal modification principle presupposes modal reasoning because it operates over a structured space of alternative possibilities — the closest possible worlds Lewis analyzed — selecting which alternatives are admissible when an antecedent is varied. Without the modal apparatus that introduces operators quantifying over accessible alternatives, there would be no space of counterfactual worlds in which to apply the minimality criterion. The principle is precisely a constraint on the accessibility ordering that modal semantics requires.


The minimal modification principle presupposes counterfactuals because it constrains which counterfactual scenarios are legitimate by requiring closeness to actuality.

The minimal modification principle presupposes counterfactuals because it is a constraint on how to construct and evaluate counterfactual scenarios: vary only the antecedent and preserve as many actual facts as possible. Without the prior commitment to reason about "if A had been the case, then B would have followed" claims by comparing the actual world to relevantly-altered alternatives, there is nothing for the minimality requirement to discipline. The principle supplies the closeness ordering that makes counterfactual evaluation tractable rather than degenerating into unbounded reimagining.


Lewis's minimal-modification rule is a constraint governing how counterfactual scenarios are constructed within counterfactual reasoning, a component not a kind. Counterfactual Reasoning supplies the prerequisite condition: Hypothetical alternatives. Minimal Modification Principle operates against that background: Preserve true facts when constructing alternative scenarios. 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.


A minimal pair is 'a comparison engineered so that exactly one feature differs', which upgrades difference-noting into causal attribution — a specialization of comparison. Comparison supplies the genus: Place items in a shared frame along chosen dimensions to read off a relation between them. Minimal Pairs preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Hold everything constant except one feature, observe whether the output changes, and attribute the difference to that feature. 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.


Minimalism is the specific shape abstraction takes when the retention principle is reduction to the essential by elimination of the inessential.

Abstraction is the purpose-relative retention of structure: keeping what is load-bearing for a use and discarding what is not. Minimalism is the particular shape this pattern takes when the principle of selection is positive elimination — fewer colors, fewer steps, fewer words — chosen to heighten clarity or potency rather than to under-specify. It inherits abstraction's selective-retention move and adds the commitment that reduction itself is constitutive of value. A structurally-particularized instance of abstraction whose specific selection principle is necessity through deliberate elimination.


Minimalism presupposes constraint because its disciplined stripping-away operates as a binding restriction on what counts as admissible in the design.

Minimalism is the deliberate elimination of everything inessential, which operates as a binding restriction on the admissible set of design moves: ornamental, redundant, or non-load-bearing elements are forbidden from inclusion. Without constraint's machinery of treating a binding restriction as a first-class structural object, there would be no structural difference between an under-specified design and a minimalist one. Minimalism is the active imposition of a necessity-only restriction on the design space, deploying constraint's binding-restriction structure as an aesthetic and functional discipline.


Minimalism in art is a kind of minimalism that applies radical reduction of formal elements to visual and sculptural composition.

Minimalism in art is a specialization of minimalism: the disciplined removal of ornament, figuration, and illusionistic depth, leaving only geometric primitives, industrial materials, and essential structural components so that what remains carries all the weight. It inherits minimalism's commitment to necessity-through-elimination and heightened emphasis on remaining elements, particularized to the visual-aesthetic case where the reduction operates on representational and decorative content and the encounter becomes phenomenological rather than illustrative.


Minimax is the specific quantifier-alternation specialization of optimization — optimize over actions against a SUPREMUM over an adversary set (a sup-over-set rule), distinct from optimization in general. makes optimization/multiobjective_optimization the genus it is not identical to. Optimization supplies the genus: Finds best solution under constraints. Minimax Strategy preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Choose the action whose worst possible outcome is the best worst possible outcome — minimize the maximum loss an adversarial environment can inflict. 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.


Minimum_necessary_disclosure operates AFTER authorization — access_control gates who-may-read; this prime governs response-payload breadth under authorized access, projecting surplus at the source. It presupposes access_control (entry is already granted) and bounds what travels. Access Control supplies the prerequisite condition: Restrict system access. Minimum-Necessary Disclosure operates against that background: A producer delivers only the subset of its record a consumer's role requires, stripping the surplus at the source. 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.


Minimum Viable Product presupposes Iteration: an MVP is meaningful only as the first round of a learn-and-refine cycle.

An MVP is the smallest version of a product that can be released to real users to gather feedback, and its defining commitment is that speed-to-feedback drives subsequent refinement. That stance collapses without Iteration as the surrounding structure: the MVP's output must become input to the next build, with state carried between rounds and progress measured across them. Stripped of the iterative loop it sits in, the MVP is just an underbuilt product rather than a learning instrument.


Minimum viable product is a specialization of satisficing that releases the simplest feature-set meeting core user needs to learn quickly.

Minimum viable product is a specialization of satisficing. Specifically, it instantiates the aspiration-level-search-and-terminate pattern in the product development context: the aspiration is core-user-need-met, the search proceeds by progressively trimming features rather than expanding them, and the launch decision terminates search the moment the threshold is reached, accepting the design without proving no better one exists. Like other satisficing, it sacrifices optimality for speed; MVP is the subclass that explicitly trades pre-launch completeness for real-world feedback learning.


MVP is 'Gall's Law operationalized for the venture substrate' — the prime is strictly more general (its viability predicate is 'works in its own environment', not 'customers pay'). galls_law is the parent; mvp keeps its satisficing/iteration parents. Gall's Law supplies the genus: A complex working system is reached only through a connected chain of simpler systems that each worked, never by from-scratch design of the whole. Minimum Viable Product (MVP) preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Minimum viable product. 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 'a species of' optionality — the specific BACKWARD-looking form, preserving dominated residues already produced by a selection process, in addressable form, against a regime shift. is a specialization of optionality, specialized to retained out-voted signals. Optionality supplies the genus: The asymmetric value of having a choice—bounded downside, unbounded upside—without obligation to act. Minority Signal Preservation preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A system deliberately retains dominated, out-voted signals in addressable form to preserve optionality against future regime shifts. 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.


Missing-data mechanisms are the specific shape bias takes when systematic data absence skews inferences from observed values.

Missing-data mechanisms (MCAR, MAR, MNAR) are the specific shape bias takes when observations are absent rather than mis-measured. Bias is a systematic, sign-bearing displacement of estimator outputs away from a true value that survives in the infinite-sample limit. Each missingness mechanism inscribes a particular bias signature: MCAR is unbiased complete-case but inefficient, MAR yields bias correctable by conditioning on observed variables, and MNAR produces bias that cannot be removed without modeling the missingness process itself. The taxonomy is precisely the structural anatomy of one bias source.


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

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.


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

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.


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.


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

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

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.


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

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.


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.


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

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.


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

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.


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

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.


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

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.


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

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.


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

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.


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

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 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.


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.


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

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.


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

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.


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

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

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.


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 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 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 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 '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.


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

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

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.


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

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.


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 directional cues only function by selectively guiding the viewer's limited gaze resource through the composition.

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

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.


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

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

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.


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

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

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.


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.

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.


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

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

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.


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

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.


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

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.


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.


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

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.


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

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.


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

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

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.


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 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.