Preprint
Submitted to Entropy (MDPI)
·
2026
Adaptive Agency Under Accelerating Gradients
A formal treatment of exploration, cooling, and the recoverable self under finite throughput.
The paper formalises simulated annealing as the schedule that preserves agency when the rates governing a system push past its integrative capacity. Recoverable Self Cosmology (RSC) treats the self as an adaptive decoder under finite Shannon throughput; the gradient between what arrives and what can be integrated determines whether structure persists or collapses. The framework underlies the Raconteur Road book and the Pan-American expedition's geographic structure as a literal cooling schedule.
Conference
Entropy 2026
·
Sciforum 166132
Entropy, Annealing, and the Continuity of Agency in Human–AI Systems
Presented at Entropy 2026 — the annual gathering on entropy and information-theoretic methods.
Extends the RSC framework to the human–AI relationship: AI accelerates exploration but threatens to push rates past human integrative capacity. The paper argues that an explicit annealing schedule — slow geographic pacing, rate-limited curation, deliberate cooling — is the structural defence against rate pressure that AI alone cannot self-regulate. Lab-grade theory; the expedition is the lived demonstration.