Open question
Compression sometimes preserves approximate truth, sometimes inverts it, sometimes wanders into orthogonal territory. The current frame doesn’t say which happens when. The worry the book wants to express needs an answer here to land.
Status. provisionally resolved
Where the book lands. Truth value is not carried by the inner message (the claim) but by the fit between the idea’s outer message — its decoding key — and the key the receiver decodes with. Compression strips the key, not the claim, so it can preserve approximate truth (keys close), invert truth (keys opposed), or render truth orthogonal (the claim is read as an identity flag, not decoded as a claim at all). Which regime occurs is decided by selection: the gate picks the compressed variant matching its criteria. Drafted in truth-compression-and-when-each-wins.md.
Connections
- Raised in: Virality Trade-off, Ch 7 — Emotional Memetics As The Floor, Lossy — Outline, Ch 5c — Truth, Compression, and When Each Wins, Truth, Compression, and When Each Wins
- Evidenced by: Amusing Ourselves to Death, Memetics — a critique
- Built on by: Core truth survives a medium on two joint conditions, Truth value lives in the key-fit, not the claim
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