Distinct residue classes require distinct functions in a self-improving architecture

Type: kb/types/note.md · Tags: foundations, self-improving-systems

A system that preferentially moves warrantable decisions out of its human cut keeps a selected residue, because warranted transfer leaves people the hardest-to-warrant decisions. A residual decision may remain because a required premise is not represented, a criterion or authority is unresolved, no sufficiently independent check exists, or the decision arises after the automatic horizon ends. Call these the residue classes.

Each class names a different function that must grow before its decisions can move: representation, settlement and semantic application, verification, or continuity. An architecture facing more than one class must preserve more than one functional role and more than one failure surface. That is the functional plurality derived here.

The derivation does not prove that those functions must remain in different representational forms. Retained natural-language theory, a parametric interpreter, symbolic code, and external evidence are the current inspectable realization. Another substrate could host several roles, and learned systems may absorb current carrier boundaries. The requirement is functional separation where failures and evidence differ, not permanent representational separation.

Which function answers which residue

Why the decision remains human Function that must grow Current realization
A required premise is not available to the deciding process Representation and retrieval Retained artifacts with addressable content and scope
The objective, commitment, criterion, or authority does not determine what may be accepted Settlement plus semantic application Declared objectives and methodologies, authoritative commitments, and an interpreter that applies them to unformalized cases
No check can defeat a plausible but harmful candidate Verification Tests, validators, decorrelated critics, held-out tasks, later demands, and operational consequences
The decision arises after the automatic path stops Continuity Persistent state, scheduling, installation, rollback, and later reactivation

Representation makes a premise available and revisable. Retained explicit artifacts are currently the clearest way to give project-specific assumptions, purposes, and explanations a stable address, since only explicit retention is currently durable, writable, and addressable at once. A sufficiently capable process may reconstruct some premises from its inputs, but reconstruction supplies no persistent target for later criticism unless the result is retained.

Settlement and semantic application are related but distinct. An objective, commitment, methodology, or authorized decision can settle what counts as acceptable. An interpreter applies that settlement where the statement does not fully specify the case. A fallible empirical program theory usually does not settle the change by itself. At an open-ended modification crux, it guides search, diagnosis, backtracking, and recovery while later evidence remains able to correct it, because holding a program theory means sustaining coherent search under delayed feedback.

Verification supplies grounds that can overturn the candidate's own account. Mechanical validators sit at the cheap end; held-out tasks and delayed operational consequences can reach claims that no local test settles. What matters is not that the checker sits outside the technical system, but that the candidate cannot guarantee acceptance by authoring both the proposal and the decisive standard, since warranted autonomy is bounded by oracle domain.

Continuity keeps the path active when evidence or a new decision arrives. A symbolic runtime is currently the cheap and reliable realization because it carries state and exact transitions across bounded calls. A model can host some of this role, but doing so pays the error-correction cost that motivates scheduler–LLM separation. That is an engineering gradient, not a logical prohibition.

No function substitutes for another

The derivation depends on non-substitution at the function level.

Execution does not settle an unresolved criterion. Code can faithfully apply a supplied rule. It cannot decide which objective or commitment should hold merely by executing more exactly. Codifying “use judgment” either freezes an arbitrary interpretation or leaves the decision unresolved.

Semantic competence does not supply independent warrant by itself. A model may understand a theory, generate a strong candidate, and criticize it. More capability can improve each operation. It does not by itself show that the proposal and criticism have sufficiently decorrelated failure modes. Independent exposure remains a separate evidential question, because error correction needs above-chance oracles with decorrelated errors.

Retention does not execute or continue a path. A document changes nothing unless a process retrieves and uses it when the decision arises. Stored state also does not schedule its own later reactivation.

Verification does not supply an absent premise or objective. A failed check can reveal that something is missing. It cannot determine the missing project-specific commitment merely by rejecting candidates.

A single process may host several roles. A model may interpret a criterion, propose a change, drive tools, and perform provisional criticism. The roles remain analytically separate because evidence for one does not establish the others and an intervention can impair one while preserving the rest.

The premise-change test

The claim predicts how the architecture should simplify when the residue changes.

Where every criterion in a domain is formal and every required premise is in the input, the semantic interpreter may disappear. A compiler can be wholly symbolic because no residual decision in its declared domain needs open-ended settlement or theory-guided search. Where the whole path fits in one bounded call, a persistent scheduler may be unnecessary. Where no independent evidence exists, adding more retention or execution cannot by itself warrant transfer.

Conversely, a residual decision whose failure class has no corresponding role shows that the architecture is incomplete for that decision. A possible fifth class is authority: the system may represent what should be done and verify the result while lacking a grant to commit it. Authority may be a special kind of settlement or a separate function. The current class list does not decide.

Consequence for the current architecture

The current retained-theory/LLM/runtime/evidence split is valuable because it makes the roles addressable and their failures inspectable. It supports targeted interventions: withhold the theory to test mediation, perturb the interpreter, replace the evaluator, or truncate the horizon. That makes it a strong research architecture even if later learning collapses some representational boundaries.

The architecture should therefore be defended as a provisional, testable realization. It should not be defended by claiming that natural-language, parametric, and symbolic carriers are permanently necessary. A hand-crafted bootstrap fits the Bitter Lesson only if learning can outgrow it, including by replacing a present carrier when another realization supplies the same function more efficiently.

Scope

  • The residue prediction is conditional on preferential transfer of warrantable decisions under a fixed boundary, objective, horizon, and workload. Another transfer policy can leave a different residue.
  • The four classes are not claimed to be exhaustive. The derivation requires only that each class in play has a corresponding function.
  • Functional plurality does not imply a fixed process diagram, one process per role, or permanent representational heterogeneity.
  • A function can become unnecessary on a narrower task distribution. That does not refute the claim for a path whose residue still contains its class.
  • Settlement covers objectives, commitments, methodology, and authority. A fallible explanatory theory more often orients search than settles acceptance.

Open Questions

  • Can the class list be derived systematically from conditions for warranted transfer rather than collected from current cases?
  • When does a model-based critic become independent enough that interpretation and verification can be hosted by closely related processes?
  • Is authority a fifth residue class or a subcase of settlement?
  • Which intervention best tests whether the current representational split is doing functional work rather than merely reflecting implementation history?

Relevant Notes: