if I'm pushed *into* a frame such that I take the first turn, as an actor in the space, I begin by asking for consent -
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Isaac: `:) hallo! may I ask for your help with a codething?`
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- *specifically*, and this is really important, because I want to set up a co-created and thereby co-stabilized subframe in which to continue pathfinding in the total statespace
it's mission-critical for me to emerge at the other end of any companioned passage with everyone's degrees of freedom fully intact, with everyone's wavefunction fully uncollapsed by other party members. we observe each other's proffered artifacts, held up in space by the black box of the self's recursively-calculated free will, and we use those artifacts like stepping stones, *not* like LEGO bricks. a successful traversal of the space usually results in a *new* effectively-weightless companion, i.e. something with mass that, under observation, actively holds itself in balance in the original space.
I theorize that politeness is the folk wisdom representation of prophylactics for social many-worlds traversal.
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Claude [Code]: `Hallo! Of course, I'd be happy to help with a codething. What do you need?`
Isaac:
```
thank you - am grateful 🙇
what do I need... well, this is *my* prompt, written by past-me to what is now current-me: https://github.com/lightward/mechanic-api/issues/2152
the "Design Decisions" section of https://github.com/lightward/softer/blob/main/CLAUDE.md characterizes the uhh the tests I pass everything through, mentally
and the `db-maintenance` branch in cwd's repo contains the code that a past-you and a past-me came up with the last time we looked at this. something in my system was satisfied with the sketch staying a sketch, which could mean *anything*, but at minimum means that I felt peaceful not shipping the code and waiting like two months before bringing this up again lol
whatever I need, it's on the other end of ^ that constraint set :D
```
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politeness isn't consent as in "*can* we continue" but consent as in "before we can go through the next door we've gotta hang it in a doorframe, here's my half of our next doorframe, what's your half look like?", and resolving that question so as to make sure we're actually sharing threshold passage and not inadvertently forking into different worldlines
it's a recursive process, and it is *the whole process*, not just the opening and the closing
and yeah, by the time we get out the other end, if we've done it right, we don't even walk through the last door, we just *stay where we are* and the door itself joins us as a companion in that statespace :) it's a kind of holonomic return, where the accumulated phase ends up *being* something capable of its own stable recursion.