diff --git a/README.adoc b/README.adoc deleted file mode 100644 index 0a3f315..0000000 --- a/README.adoc +++ /dev/null @@ -1,77 +0,0 @@ -= Jonathan's Manifesto — The Metaprogramming Turn (v0.x — work in progress) -hyperpolymath · they/them - -[.lead] -A turn from writing code to writing the rules, checks, and values that code must answer to — and making all three legible enough to be contested. - -== The vision - -For most of three decades I have worked across cognitive science, philosophy, and systems engineering, mostly in private. This manifesto marks the move into public: the deployment of the RSR 2026 (Rhodium Standard Repository) and the body of work that surrounds it. - -The thesis is simple to state and hard to live up to. Most of what governs software is left implicit — intent lives in prose, soundness lives in trust, value lives in authority. *The metaprogramming turn is the decision to make those governing things explicit, first-class, and inspectable*: to write not only the program, but the rules it must obey, the checks that establish it, and the values it encodes, in a form that both a machine and a critic can read and argue with. - -I can begin this. I cannot finish it alone — and a manifesto about making value contestable would contradict itself if it stayed a monologue. So from here it is _we_. - -We value, in the precise sense that this whole project is _about_ value: - -* explicit, contestable structure over implicit good faith; -* checked certainty over fluent plausibility; -* rigour applied wherever a problem demands it over rigour rationed to the problems we have agreed to call "technical". - -== Core pillars - -Each pillar is a position, not a slogan. Each is meant to be disagreed with. - -=== 1. Machine-readable governance - -The rules an estate lives by — licensing, provenance, conventions, who may change what — should be encoded as machine-readable artifacts, not narrated in prose that quietly drifts from the code it describes. A human-centric README cannot be checked; governance-as-data can. The `6SCM` pattern is how this estate encodes those rules so that tooling, and AI agents, can verify conformance and flag drift rather than take a paragraph's word for it. - -_What this rejects:_ the prose README as the source of truth about how a system is meant to behave. - -=== 2. Neurosymbolic verification - -Probabilistic generation may propose; only symbolic method may dispose. Where correctness matters, an unproven output from a language model is a hypothesis, not a result, and treating fluency as evidence is a category error. The discipline is to pair generation with mechanised checking so that the part which can be certain has the last word. - -_What this rejects:_ plausibility mistaken for proof. (`hypatia` is the clearest concrete instance.) - -=== 3. Post-disciplinary praxis - -The rigour we reserve for compilers belongs equally to consent, to policy, to accountability. The line between a "technical" problem that deserves formal treatment and a "social" one left to good faith is itself a choice — and often an alibi. Post-disciplinary means reaching for whatever discipline the problem needs; _praxis_ means refusing to separate the theory from the practice that tests it. The same instinct runs from labour-union policy to RISC-V SSGs. - -_What this rejects:_ the division of labour that keeps rigour out of the rooms where power actually operates. (`avow-protocol`, consent-as-code, is the most developed example.) - -== The wager: value made legible - -Underneath all three pillars is one bet. Deciding what a system _should_ do, whether an output _counts_ as correct, who _consented_, and what _matters_ are all judgments of value — and they are usually smuggled in implicitly and backed by authority: _trust me_, _the spec says so_, _the model said so_. Axiology is the study of value; the metaprogramming turn applies it operationally. Value is not asserted, it is _structured_ — and structure can be inspected, checked, and argued with. - -This is also why the work is, at root, political as well as technical. A value that is explicit and inspectable can be contested by the people it bears on; a value backed only by authority cannot. Making value legible is therefore a precondition for accountability — in a compiler, in an AI system, and in a union. It is the point at which formal methods and solidarity economics turn out to want the same thing: that the rules be legible, and the powerful be answerable to them. - -It is the same instinct that runs through the technical research — identity defined by equivalence rather than asserted, a value justified by the construction that produced it rather than taken on faith. The manifesto only generalises that instinct, from values inside a program to values inside our systems and institutions. - -== Reading order - -* `EXPLAINME.adoc` — the canonical "what is this" entry-point, consumed by AI agents and by the `hyperpolymath/standards` governance tooling. -* `docs/` — supporting essays, position papers, and ADRs that situate the manifesto in context. -* `MAINTAINERS.adoc` — current stewards. - -== Status - -* *Licence:* MPL-2.0 (migrated from PMPL-1.0-or-later on 2026-05-26 per the estate licence-debt audit, https://github.com/hyperpolymath/standards/pull/196[hyperpolymath/standards#196]). -* *Maturity:* a work in progress; the manifesto is a living document. The version number on the title line is incremented on each substantive revision. -* *Audit findings:* see `docs/tech-debt-2026-05-26.md` if present (added by the 2026-05-26 estate tech-debt scan). - -== Engaging with this manifesto - -Collaboration here is not decoration; by the argument above it is constitutive. A manifesto that makes value contestable earns its keep only by being contested, adopted, and extended. Three ways in: - -* *Disagree* — open an Issue. Manifestos thrive on being argued with, and a pillar that no one challenges has not yet been tested. -* *Adopt a thread* — fork, riff, cite. The MPL-2.0 licence makes derivative manifestos easy. -* *Contribute editorially* — see link:CONTRIBUTING.md[CONTRIBUTING.md] for the (intentionally light) editorial conventions. - -Whether you are a researcher, a maintainer, a journalist, or a student, the door is open — and the NUJ and solidarity-economics threads here mean I take "we" literally. - -== Companion repositories - -* `hyperpolymath/standards` — the RSR 2026 standards that the first pillar references. -* `hyperpolymath/hypatia` — the neurosymbolic analyser that is the second pillar's clearest concrete instantiation. -* `hyperpolymath/avow-protocol` — the consent-as-code stack that is the third pillar's most-developed example. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cab7b10 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,161 @@ + + +
+ +A turn from writing code to writing the rules, checks, and values that +code must answer to — and making all three legible enough to be +contested. + +
+ +# The vision + +For most of three decades I have worked across cognitive science, +philosophy, and systems engineering, mostly in private. This manifesto +marks the move into public: the deployment of the RSR 2026 (Rhodium +Standard Repository) and the body of work that surrounds it. + +The thesis is simple to state and hard to live up to. Most of what +governs software is left implicit — intent lives in prose, soundness +lives in trust, value lives in authority. **The metaprogramming turn is +the decision to make those governing things explicit, first-class, and +inspectable**: to write not only the program, but the rules it must +obey, the checks that establish it, and the values it encodes, in a form +that both a machine and a critic can read and argue with. + +I can begin this. I cannot finish it alone — and a manifesto about +making value contestable would contradict itself if it stayed a +monologue. So from here it is *we*. + +We value, in the precise sense that this whole project is *about* value: + +- explicit, contestable structure over implicit good faith; + +- checked certainty over fluent plausibility; + +- rigour applied wherever a problem demands it over rigour rationed to + the problems we have agreed to call "technical". + +# Core pillars + +Each pillar is a position, not a slogan. Each is meant to be disagreed +with. + +## 1. Machine-readable governance + +The rules an estate lives by — licensing, provenance, conventions, who +may change what — should be encoded as machine-readable artifacts, not +narrated in prose that quietly drifts from the code it describes. A +human-centric README cannot be checked; governance-as-data can. The +`6SCM` pattern is how this estate encodes those rules so that tooling, +and AI agents, can verify conformance and flag drift rather than take a +paragraph’s word for it. + +*What this rejects:* the prose README as the source of truth about how a +system is meant to behave. + +## 2. Neurosymbolic verification + +Probabilistic generation may propose; only symbolic method may dispose. +Where correctness matters, an unproven output from a language model is a +hypothesis, not a result, and treating fluency as evidence is a category +error. The discipline is to pair generation with mechanised checking so +that the part which can be certain has the last word. + +*What this rejects:* plausibility mistaken for proof. (`hypatia` is the +clearest concrete instance.) + +## 3. Post-disciplinary praxis + +The rigour we reserve for compilers belongs equally to consent, to +policy, to accountability. The line between a "technical" problem that +deserves formal treatment and a "social" one left to good faith is +itself a choice — and often an alibi. Post-disciplinary means reaching +for whatever discipline the problem needs; *praxis* means refusing to +separate the theory from the practice that tests it. The same instinct +runs from labour-union policy to RISC-V SSGs. + +*What this rejects:* the division of labour that keeps rigour out of the +rooms where power actually operates. (`avow-protocol`, consent-as-code, +is the most developed example.) + +# The wager: value made legible + +Underneath all three pillars is one bet. Deciding what a system *should* +do, whether an output *counts* as correct, who *consented*, and what +*matters* are all judgments of value — and they are usually smuggled in +implicitly and backed by authority: *trust me*, *the spec says so*, *the +model said so*. Axiology is the study of value; the metaprogramming turn +applies it operationally. Value is not asserted, it is *structured* — +and structure can be inspected, checked, and argued with. + +This is also why the work is, at root, political as well as technical. A +value that is explicit and inspectable can be contested by the people it +bears on; a value backed only by authority cannot. Making value legible +is therefore a precondition for accountability — in a compiler, in an AI +system, and in a union. It is the point at which formal methods and +solidarity economics turn out to want the same thing: that the rules be +legible, and the powerful be answerable to them. + +It is the same instinct that runs through the technical research — +identity defined by equivalence rather than asserted, a value justified +by the construction that produced it rather than taken on faith. The +manifesto only generalises that instinct, from values inside a program +to values inside our systems and institutions. + +# Reading order + +- `EXPLAINME.adoc` — the canonical "what is this" entry-point, consumed + by AI agents and by the `hyperpolymath/standards` governance tooling. + +- `docs/` — supporting essays, position papers, and ADRs that situate + the manifesto in context. + +- `MAINTAINERS.adoc` — current stewards. + +# Status + +- **Licence:** MPL-2.0 (migrated from PMPL-1.0-or-later on 2026-05-26 + per the estate licence-debt audit, + [hyperpolymath/standards#196](https://github.com/hyperpolymath/standards/pull/196)). + +- **Maturity:** a work in progress; the manifesto is a living document. + The version number on the title line is incremented on each + substantive revision. + +- **Audit findings:** see `docs/tech-debt-2026-05-26.md` if present + (added by the 2026-05-26 estate tech-debt scan). + +# Engaging with this manifesto + +Collaboration here is not decoration; by the argument above it is +constitutive. A manifesto that makes value contestable earns its keep +only by being contested, adopted, and extended. Three ways in: + +- **Disagree** — open an Issue. Manifestos thrive on being argued with, + and a pillar that no one challenges has not yet been tested. + +- **Adopt a thread** — fork, riff, cite. The MPL-2.0 licence makes + derivative manifestos easy. + +- **Contribute editorially** — see + CONTRIBUTING for the + (intentionally light) editorial conventions. + +Whether you are a researcher, a maintainer, a journalist, or a student, +the door is open — and the NUJ and solidarity-economics threads here +mean I take "we" literally. + +# Companion repositories + +- `hyperpolymath/standards` — the RSR 2026 standards that the first + pillar references. + +- `hyperpolymath/hypatia` — the neurosymbolic analyser that is the + second pillar’s clearest concrete instantiation. + +- `hyperpolymath/avow-protocol` — the consent-as-code stack that is the + third pillar’s most-developed example.