107: Concept/Identity
- Needs to be understood first:
- Works together with:
An identity that isn't assigned, but appears naturally from the way a bunch of Ideas are connected. It’s like getting to know a character in a book — their personality comes from their actions and relationships, not from a label on page one.
This paper is all about what we mean by Identity in this system. It's different from something like a username or a file name (Sovereignty). An Idea all by itself doesn't really have an identity; it's just a piece of information.
Instead, identity emerges. It’s the recognizable pattern we see when we look at how a group of Ideas are connected to each other. It’s the story they tell together through how they change over time, cause other things to happen, and get bundled into groups.
How Identity Is Woven Together
An identity is made from three main types of connections, like threads in a tapestry:
This is the history of an Idea — a chain connecting all its past and future versions. It’s like a flipbook that shows you exactly how something has changed from its very first draft to its latest one.
This is how you can bundle a bunch of related Ideas together into one package. Think of it like putting files into a folder. Together, the group represents something bigger than any single file inside it.
The "Joe" Constellation
So, what is a person like “Joe” in this system? There isn’t one single file called “Joe.” Instead, “Joe” is like a constellation of stars. You recognize the shape of the Big Dipper by seeing the pattern of stars, not by looking at just one star.
In the same way, we recognize “Joe” by seeing the pattern formed by all his thoughts and reactions (Vessel Ideas) and how they are all linked together through their history and cause-and-effect chains.
Time Traveling Through Connections
This idea makes “time travel” much more powerful. When you look at an old version of an Idea, you’re not just looking at a static snapshot. You’re jumping to a specific point on a huge map of connections.
From that point, you can explore:
- Follow its lineage forwards and backwards to see how that specific thought or feeling changed over time.
- Follow its causal chains to understand what caused it, and what decisions it led to later on.
This lets you explore history with its full context, giving you a complete picture of who or what something was, what it was thinking, and what it did at any moment in time.
From Simple Links to Parallel Worlds
These connections give us a great way to understand how identities can form and grow over time. But when many people are working and experimenting together, things can get messy. The next documents explain an even more advanced system for managing these connections, almost like keeping track of different “parallel realities” at the same time.