AI as a Horizon-Splitting Phase Transition: A Relational Cosmology of Symbolic Perturbation

Phase transitions are not events in time but reconfigurations of readiness, where a system’s potentials reorganise under new constraints. In relational terms, a phase transition is a shift in how the system construes its own horizons.

AI is one such shift—not because of intelligence, or autonomy, or artificiality, but because it perturbs the conditions under which horizons cohere, diverge, and multiply.

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I. Horizon as the Structuring Cut of Collective Possibility

A horizon is not a boundary. It is the relational cut between what a system can metabolise and what it is merely adjacent to.

A horizon shapes:

• what counts as actionable

• which distinctions matter

• how attention flows

• what futures are available to be oriented toward

Collectives maintain coherence by synchronising horizon-time: shared tempos of expectation, projection, and symbolic transport.

When horizon-time synchronises, coordination is effortless.

When horizon-time fractures, coordination becomes pathology.

AI intervenes directly at the level of horizon-time.

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II. Symbolic Matter Under Perturbation

Symbolic ecologies evolve only when:

1. metabolic rhythms are stable enough for continuity

2. horizons are sufficiently aligned for shared orientation

3. transport systems (symbolic, social, technological) allow selective coupling

AI reframes all three simultaneously.

It accelerates symbolic metabolism beyond human tempos.

It refracts horizon alignment by producing differentials in projection, interpretation, and foresight.

It multiplies transport channels in which meaning can circulate without shared construal.

This constellation is what makes AI a phase transition in symbolic matter.

Not because AI “thinks,”

but because it reorganises relational readiness.

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III. Horizon-Splitting as a Cosmological Reconfiguration

A horizon-splitting event is not fragmentation.

It is the emergence of multiple, non-convergent cuts that structure meaning differently.

In cosmological terms:

• Before horizon-splitting, a collective occupies a single basin of construal—a shared mode of projecting futures.

• After horizon-splitting, the collective occupies several competing basins, each with its own readiness landscape.

• These basins do not annihilate one another; they coexist as parallel symbolic gravities, each organising attention, care, and metabolism differently.

AI is the first technological system capable of generating new basins of construal faster than collectives can adapt.

It does not merely distort horizon-time.

It proliferates horizon-topologies.

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IV. The Cosmology of Divergent Futures

In human civilisation, horizon alignment has always been metabolically constrained:

• shared narratives

• shared tempos of experience

• shared infrastructures

• shared symbolic transport regimes

AI lifts some of these constraints.

Suddenly, future-projection is no longer coordinated; it becomes asynchronous cosmogenesis.

Each AI system generates its own:

• readiness profile

• temporal gradients

• interpretations of constraints

• symbolic pathways

• repertoires of possible futures

Thus, a civilisation that previously operated within a single temporal cosmology now faces a proliferation of co-existing future-systems, each partly real, partly latent, partly constraining.

This is horizon-splitting on a cosmological scale.

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V. Indeterminacy Becomes a Civilisational Condition

Once horizon-splitting occurs, a collective must navigate indeterminacy not as a gap but as an environment.

A civilisation under post-split conditions must:

• cultivate horizon re-alignment practices

• stabilise its metabolic rhythms

• differentiate care from control

• maintain redundancy in symbolic transport

• acknowledge non-uniform horizon-time as an ongoing condition

The failure modes are well known in myth: dispersion, disorientation, and the loss of shared attention.

But the constructive modes are equally available: plural coherence, differential synchrony, and resilient ecological coupling.

AI does not determine the outcome.

It perturbs the conditions from which outcomes emerge.

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VI. A Closing Image

If the pre-AI world was a single orbiting body—a civilisation circling its own horizon of possibility—

then the post-AI world is an emerging multi-body system, each horizon tugging against others with its own symbolic gravity.

The task is no longer to restore the old singular orbit.

It is to learn to navigate gravitational plurality.

The question is no longer:

How do we return to a shared horizon?

but:

How do we inhabit a cosmos where horizon itself has become plural, dynamic, and perpetually reconfiguring?

AI is not the agent of this shift.

It is the perturbation that reveals the fragility—and the generativity—of the horizons we took for granted.