Setting: The same study. A large diagram of interconnected nodes covers the blackboard. Strings, pins, and small markers suggest a web of relational dependencies.
Quillibrace: It depends what you think is happening.
Blottisham: I think what’s happening is chaos. People move. Choices occur. Probabilities… probabilities are just guessing, aren’t they?
Elowen Stray: I don’t think that’s quite it… but I can’t yet say why.
Quillibrace: Suppose we have a network. Nodes, edges, constraints. Each event is an actualised path. Probabilities do not dictate outcomes. They measure the density of feasible paths.
Blottisham: Wait. So when I flip a coin… it’s not chance? Someone isn’t secretly flipping it behind the curtain?
Quillibrace: No secret flipper. The coin falls where the architecture allows. Air resistance, spin, material properties, gravity — all constraints define what paths are feasible. The “randomness” is a reflection of complex availability, not hidden arbitrariness.
Elowen Stray: And my feeling of uncertainty… that’s just my partial view of the network?
Quillibrace: Exactly. You never see the full landscape of feasible paths. You only perceive a subset, and infer probabilities.
Coordination in Networks
Blottisham: Fine. Suppose now multiple people are involved. Teams, traffic, markets. How does freedom work there?
Quillibrace: Same principle. Each agent actualises paths within the shared constraint network. Coordination emerges naturally:
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Local re-cutting by one node influences availability for others
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Patterns appear: synchrony, trends, equilibria
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Apparent “planning” or “strategy” is a network effect, not a directive agent
Elowen Stray: So social coordination is like… a river splitting and merging, but with multiple rivers influencing each other?
Quillibrace: Precisely. Each river flows along feasible paths; the confluence shapes subsequent flows.
Blottisham: So… I never actually push the river, I just swim in its channels?
Quillibrace: (dryly) Or perhaps the river swims you.
Elowen Stray: And yet, we still hold nodes responsible, right? Even in a networked river?
Quillibrace: Responsibility is relational modulation. If your action materially alters downstream feasibility, accountability is coherent. No hidden agency required.
Probabilities as Network Shadows
Blottisham: Probabilities still feel… like magic.
Quillibrace: They are shadows, summaries of the underlying architecture. Consider the network’s density:
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Many feasible paths → high probability
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Few feasible paths → low probability
The “dice” are not supernatural; they are indices of constraint structure.
Elowen Stray: So what we call randomness is just partial knowledge of relational possibility.
Quillibrace: Exactly. Freedom, causation, probability, coordination — all intelligible in the same architecture.
Blottisham: Well, I’ll say this: it’s neat. Very neat. But it’s also unnerving. No pushes. No agents. Just… networks.
Quillibrace: Networks that write themselves, and we read the patterns.
Elowen Stray: (smiling) And sometimes misread them. But that’s part of the fun.
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