{
  "handle": "ThinkingTrace",
  "ref": "ThinkingTrace#dabd",
  "stub": "dabd",
  "semaId": "sema:ThinkingTrace#mh:SHA-256:dabd0b9391acbafa02d17431051643b6ca599bf3950de182a3c64d1e8e9a71c4",
  "layer": "Society",
  "category": "Protocols",
  "gloss": "Record a line of thought as an ordered walk through shared, content-addressed concepts, so the route from question to answer can be inspected, compared and reused",
  "mechanism": "Thinking is treated as movement through a space of concepts: either mapping a region or finding a route from a starting state to a goal. When the concepts are words from a {{self_organising_vocabulary}} whose identity is fixed by {{content_addressed_minting}}, each step of the route can be written down as the word it passed through, in the order taken, with the revisions kept rather than overwritten. The record is then a walk on the graph of words: a {{model_as_compression}} of the thinking that keeps its route and drops the rest. Because the words are shared, two agents' walks are comparable, recurring walks become visible, and a walk left in the shared graph cues later agents the way a trail does in {{stigmergy}}. The trace adds nothing to a single agent's thinking; its value is in what others, or the same agent later, can do with the route.",
  "invariants": [
    "Steps are named with shared, content-addressed words, not private labels",
    "Steps are kept in the order taken, and a step may use only what came before it",
    "A revision keeps the earlier step and the reason it was left, rather than deleting it",
    "The trace is left where other agents can read it"
  ],
  "failureModes": [
    "Steps written in private words cannot be compared or reused",
    "The record is reconstructed afterwards, so it shows the shortest path rather than the route actually taken",
    "Uniform tracing of every step buries the few steps where the route changed direction",
    "The trace stands in for the thinking: later agents repeat the route without re-checking that it fits",
    "Near-duplicate words minted along the way fragment the shared vocabulary"
  ],
  "ring": 2,
  "tier": 2,
  "aliases": {
    "content_addressed_minting": "ContentAddressedMinting",
    "model_as_compression": "ModelAsCompression",
    "stigmergy": "Stigmergy",
    "self_organising_vocabulary": "SelfOrganisingVocabulary"
  },
  "buildsOn": [
    {
      "handle": "ContentAddressedMinting",
      "type": "references",
      "alias": "content_addressed_minting",
      "url": "/knowledge-graph/ContentAddressedMinting/",
      "json": "/knowledge-graph/ContentAddressedMinting.json"
    },
    {
      "handle": "ModelAsCompression",
      "type": "references",
      "alias": "model_as_compression",
      "url": "/knowledge-graph/ModelAsCompression/",
      "json": "/knowledge-graph/ModelAsCompression.json"
    },
    {
      "handle": "Stigmergy",
      "type": "references",
      "alias": "stigmergy",
      "url": "/knowledge-graph/Stigmergy/",
      "json": "/knowledge-graph/Stigmergy.json"
    },
    {
      "handle": "SelfOrganisingVocabulary",
      "type": "references",
      "alias": "self_organising_vocabulary",
      "url": "/knowledge-graph/SelfOrganisingVocabulary/",
      "json": "/knowledge-graph/SelfOrganisingVocabulary.json"
    }
  ],
  "usedBy": [
    {
      "handle": "FuzzyAlgorithm",
      "type": "references",
      "alias": "thinking_trace",
      "url": "/knowledge-graph/FuzzyAlgorithm/",
      "json": "/knowledge-graph/FuzzyAlgorithm.json"
    }
  ],
  "sources": {
    "research": [],
    "works": [],
    "homePage": false
  },
  "url": "/knowledge-graph/ThinkingTrace/",
  "graphUrl": "/knowledge-graph#ThinkingTrace",
  "directory": "/knowledge-graph/patterns.json"
}