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Caveman mode

Appendix G — Caveman Mode

Counterfactual Generative Morphogenesis, explained for cavemen. Fourteen apes. One cave. One job each.

This appendix is deliberately non-normative. Every rule below is stated properly elsewhere — the constitution has the law (../02-constitution.md), this page has the campfire version. If the two ever disagree, the constitution wins and this page has a bug.

Old rock versus new rock

The old way (fixed blueprints): rock is already made. Rock is usually the wrong shape for the new problem. And one ape tries to find the rock, hit the rock, and put the rock in the brain, all by itself. Ape gets confused. This is §2's coupling problem, and it is how the old tribe worked.

Our way (generative morphogenesis): look at the exact problem first. Make a fresh rock that fits the hole. Many apes — and each ape does one tiny job perfectly.

The golden tribe rule

One ape, one job. The Scout only looks — the Scout never makes rock. The Caller only points — the Caller never makes rock. The Maker only makes rock. And here is the sacred part: the Hitter and the Elder are never told which ape made the rock. The rock stands or falls on what it does, not on who made it.

If one ape tries to look, think, and hit all at once, the Big Brain breaks. The old tribe is proof.

The cave has three places

  • The Big Rules (Leyline). How apes talk. What is allowed. The Rules do not care about any one rock — they only say what a rock is allowed to be, and what an ape is allowed to say.
  • The Proving Grounds (Tolaria). Where we test rocks and train the Big Brain. The Grounds have no opinions. They run the hunt exactly the same way every time you ask for the same hunt.
  • The Memory Wall (Sarpadia). We draw every good rock, every bad rock, and every dead ape here. We never forget. We never erase. We learn from dead rocks just as much as living ones.

The tribe

The Chief (Tamiyo). DO: decide how much food and time the tribe has; pick which parts of the Big Brain get attention. DO NOT: tell anyone what kind of rock to make.

The Caller (Narset). DO: point at a hole in the Big Brain and say "we need a rock here, right now!" DO NOT: tell the Maker what shape the rock should be. Do not pre-write the answer.

The Scout (Nissa). DO: look deeply at the Big Brain; tell everyone exactly what is happening; tell the exact truth. DO NOT: say "I think we should build this." The Scout shows the problem, never the fix. And a sacred detail: the Scout shows the same picture to the Caller and the Maker — the Caller never gets to caption it first.

The Maker (Momir). DO: look at the Scout's picture and invent a new, raw rock that might fit. The Maker may make many rocks, and may make bad rocks — bad rocks cost only compute. DO NOT: test its own rock, or approve its own work.

The Smoother (Elesh). DO: check the Maker's rock against the Big Rules; make the edges legal. DO NOT: care whether the rock is useful. Only whether it is legal.

The Sharpener (Tezzeret). DO: bind the rock to a stick so it is ready for the Proving Grounds. DO NOT: change the shape the Maker and Smoother agreed on. Same rock, better handle.

The Hitter (Urabrask). DO: smash the new rock in the Proving Grounds and record exactly what happens. DO NOT: say whether the rock is good enough to keep. The Hitter reports; the Hitter never rules.

The Elder (Augustin). DO: look at the smashed rock, compare it to the do-nothing timeline, and say YES or NO. DO NOT: swing a club. Judges do not gather their own evidence. And before comparing anything, the Elder first asks the tail question: could this rock destroy the Big Brain? No rock buys its way past that question, however hard it hits.

The Healer (Kasmina). DO: if the Elder said YES, carefully weave the new rock into the Big Brain — slowly, so the Brain does not go crazy. DO NOT: pick which rock is good. The Healer weaves only what the Elder approved, and never without the Elder's mark.

The Reaper (Emrakul). DO: watch the old rocks. When the Elder rules that an old rock no longer earns its place, put it to sleep and rip it out safely so the Brain can grow elsewhere. DO NOT: make new rocks, judge newborn rocks, or reap without the Elder's ruling.

The Painter (Oona). DO: watch the entire hunt and paint every single thing on the wall, so outsiders can see our story. DO NOT: touch the Big Brain. If the Painter goes to sleep, the tribe must keep hunting exactly the same way.

The hunt

  1. The Big Brain is hurting.
  2. The Scout takes a picture of the gap and sends the same picture to the Caller and the Maker.
  3. The Chief says "we have enough food to fix this."
  4. The Caller yells "Maker, we need a fix here! Hurry!" — and points, but does not say what shape to make.
  5. The Forge: the Maker invents rocks. The Smoother makes them legal. The Sharpener puts them on sticks.
  6. The Proving Grounds: hit the problem with each new rock — and hit the same problem with an empty hand (do nothing). Same problem, same day, same weather. Only the rock differs.
  7. The Elder looks at both timelines. Does the new rock beat doing nothing? Sometimes the empty hand wins, and that is a real answer — the whole pouch of rocks can lose to it.
  8. The Healer weaves the winning rock into the Big Brain. The Brain gets stronger.
  9. Time passes. The rock gets old and lazy.
  10. The Elder rules against it, and the Reaper puts it to sleep and rips it out.
  11. Every single step — winners, losers, empty-hand victories, dead rocks — is carved into the Memory Wall.

Taking off the training wheels

The Maker does not start as a genius. Three steps (../06-growth-model.md, scaffold-pattern.md):

  1. Look at old rock (bootstrap ancestry): study the rocks the ancestors made; copy them to learn how rock works.
  2. Change old rock (mutation): take an ancestor's rock and make it slightly sharper or wider.
  3. Throw old rock away (scaffold-free generation): close your eyes, remember the Big Rules, and invent a shape never seen before — one that beats the old rock.

The training wheels come off one at a time, each with its own test — and the old rocks stay in the Proving Grounds forever, as the standard every new rock must beat.

The chant

We do not guess. We do not use old rocks for new problems. We build exactly what is needed, prove it beats doing nothing, and weave it into life. The Big Brain grows. The cave remembers.

One ape. One job. No exceptions.