Information systems are material organizations—specific patterns of physical processes that exhibit persistence, variation, and competitive dynamics. While we can analyze them through the information lens, they remain fundamentally physical phenomena. Understanding these material foundations reveals how information systems achieve persistence, undergo change, and compete for resources within physical reality.
4.a.1 The Repeater/Jitter/Anchor Model
How persistence, variation and anchoring cooperate to keep an information system alive. Information systems persist because three material forces pull in different directions yet work together: Repeaters copy and amplify a pattern, Jitter injects variation that fuels adaptation, and Anchors enforce fidelity so the pattern does not drift into noise. These roles appear in brains, servers, rituals, error-correcting codes—anywhere information is replicated. The balance among them explains why some memes, genomes, or protocols endure while others vanish.
4.a.2 Passive Structural Influence
Self-stabilizing patterns mold their environment even when not actively propagated. Once a pattern stabilises, it begins to shape its surroundings without active effort. Like a crystal templating further growth, a paradigm, grammar, or city grid channels new material into its own structure. This section details the hallmark properties—emergent order, redundancy, self-reinforcement—and shows how such templates guide neural nets, social norms, technological standards, and even urban layouts.
4.a.3 Material Organization in Practice
Case studies: science, language, finance. Theory meets the lab bench, the tweet, and the trading floor. We walk through three arenas—scientific knowledge, natural language, and financial systems—to see how Repeaters, Jitter, Anchors and passive influence play out at multiple scales. Paradigms steer research programmes, grammar organises thought, and accounting standards lock-in economic behaviour; yet in every case variation keeps the system evolving.
4.a.4 Evolutionary Implications
Selection pressures and co-evolution of patterns and substrates. Because substrates (brains, institutions, hardware) and patterns co-adapt, evolution operates on two intertwined layers. Compatibility and efficiency act as selection pressures; cross-substrate patterns gain resilience; stability arises from the complementarity of active dynamics and passive structure. Understanding these forces clarifies why some ideas jump from neurons to silicon while others remain niche curiosities.
4.a.5 Empirical Predictions and Testable Hypotheses
How to falsify the claims about self-stabilizing patterns. The model is falsifiable. It predicts, for instance, that pliable societies adopt new templates faster; that agency emerges only when a static pattern is coupled to an autopoietic feedback engine; and that adoption rates favour structurally compatible designs. Each claim maps to measurable indicators and suggested experiments outlined in the deep-dive.
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