Qinfu Li

How Many Layers, and How Concentrated Each One What would falsify "the more complex, the more centralised": one decomposition and a test design for three propositions

Abstract That rising complexity requires more centralisation is a claim used repeatedly in cybernetics, organisation theory and complexity science, and it has never been taken apart. Because it has not, it can be neither falsified nor turned into an executable prescription. This...

How Many Layers, and How Concentrated Each One What would falsify "the more complex, the more centralised": one decomposition and a test design for three propositions

Abstract That rising complexity requires more centralisation is a claim used repeatedly in cybernetics, organisation theory and complexity science, and it has never been taken apart. Because it has not, it can be neither falsified nor turned into an executable prescription. This...

Meaning-Fields, Living Zero-Points, and Non-Stationary External Centers:A Dynamical Account of Meaning-Systems and Its Implications for Artificial General Intelligence

Abstract:We model meaning-systems—religions, ideologies, and value-systems—as dynamical objects, and argue that an uncontrollable, non-stationary meaning-field external center, of which a mature artificial general intelligence (AGI) is the salient candidate, constitutes a strong...

The Attention Budget: A Dynamics of Meaning-Systems Why a meaning-field has a master equation, in what currency it is paid, and how a system can starve with no one starving it

Abstract The dynamics of a meaning-system requires a budget. Energy will not serve: meaning is not conserved, and there is no microscopic energy ledger from which a spiritual free energy could be defined. We argue that the budget is attention flux, and show that it satisfies the...

When Does an Accounting Inequality Have Teeth? A landing criterion for the maintenance power bound in prebiotic chemistry, with a first empirical execution

Abstract Background. Prebiotic chemistry has long lacked a common ledger. Synthesis experiments either reconstruct reaction pathways or investigate energetic conditions in isolation; over several decades the two have advanced separately, and the two standard strategies, “lower th...

The Maintenance Floor on the Heavy-Tailed Branch

Abstract Classical proofs of dissipation lower bounds rest on spectral gaps or logarithmic Sobolev inequalities, and both tools are natively suited to light-tailed steady states. In multiplicative open systems whose tail index lies in the Pareto range the spectral gap disappears,...

What Survives Coarse-Graining Four Components of Cross-Level Explanation, and the Bounds on Contingent Bits

Abstract Asking whether a lower-level science can explain a higher-level one usually produces an argument rather than a result, because the question conflates objects that behave differently. This paper separates them, and downgrades V1’s central equation to a pair of bounds — th...

From Binary Randomness to Macroscopic Emergence A Microscopic Derivation of Nonuniformity Emergence, with the Load-Bearing Link Graded in Four Layers

Abstract. The macroscopic phenomenological equations of open systems — an income-minus-expenditure master equation, a gradient-flow relaxation, and a quasi-potential landscape — are usually posed as postulates. This paper supplies the microscopic link. Starting from a minimal den...

The Principle of Nonuniformity Three Structural Quantities, a Master Equation Graded in Four Layers, and the Correct Classification of Aggregation Limits

Abstract: The macroscopic phenomenological apparatus of open flow-through systems — an income-minus-expenditure master equation, a gradient-flow relaxation, and a quasi-potential landscape — is usually posed as a set of postulates. This paper assembles that apparatus into a diagn...

The Principle of Spatial Gradient Excess Screening Length, the Jeans Instance, and a Cross-Scale Applicability Map

Abstract A few nodes carrying most of the flux while vast regions remain quiescent is a spatial pattern that recurs from cities and wealth to stars and galaxies. We propose the principle of spatial gradient excess, which unifies such concentration under a single screened-field pi...

The Principle of Spatial Gradient Excess Screening Length, the Jeans Instance, and a Cross-Scale Applicability Map

Abstract A few nodes carrying most of the flux while vast regions remain quiescent is a spatial pattern that recurs from cities and wealth to stars and galaxies. We propose the principle of spatial gradient excess, which unifies such concentration under a single screened-field pi...

From Binary Randomness to Macroscopic Emergence A Microscopic Derivation of Nonuniformity Emergence, with the Load-Bearing Link Graded in Four Layers

Abstract. The macroscopic phenomenological equations of open systems — an income-minus-expenditure master equation, a gradient-flow relaxation, and a quasi-potential landscape — are usually posed as postulates. This paper supplies the microscopic link. Starting from a minimal den...

Three Layers in the Classification of Complex-System Phase Transitions Thermodynamic, Spatial, and Engineering Criteria

Abstract The first version classified complex-system transitions into two kinds by the dynamical scaling law the transition itself follows. The second withdrew that naming and gave a three-layer classification. The third made five corrections and two completions, one of which reb...

Cross-Scale Critical Synchronization in Driven Multi-Layer Systems:Thresholds, Zero-Parameter Predictions, and the Non-Normal Variance Trap

Abstract When the coupling between two adjacent layers of a driven system crosses a threshold, their critical slowing down phase-locks: the layers no longer approach instability independently but share a single diverging slow mode. This paper takes the threshold formula from elem...

Three Layers in the Classification of Complex-System Phase Transitions Thermodynamic, Spatial, and Engineering Criteria

Abstract The first version classified complex-system transitions into two kinds by the dynamical scaling law the transition itself follows. The second withdrew that naming and gave a three-layer classification. The third made five corrections and two completions, one of which reb...

The Discriminating Power of Shape Comparison in Rank Space A Quantitative Calibration of the Ordering–Fitting Method

Abstract Sort a set of quantities in descending order, fit the resulting (rank, value) curve with four families of functions — linear, logarithmic, exponential and power law — and take the one with the highest coefficient of determination as the "shape" of the series. This orderi...