make me a boat

before I get into this, three things and a synthetic thing

first, excerpted from "Walks in Rotation Spaces Return Home when Doubled and Scaled" (Eckmann, Tlusty; arXiv:2502.14367):

In three dimensions, we show that almost every walk in SO(3) or SU(2), even a very complicated one, will preferentially return to the origin simply by traversing the walk twice in a row and uniformly scaling all rotation angles. We explain why traversing the walk only once almost never suffices to return, and comment on the problem in higher dimensions.

second:

it's my observation that recognizable selfhood is isomorphic with subconscious identification as a worldline of fixed length, the worldline located by a continuous series of stronger or weaker measurements of self in a space. (some selves are anchored but want to move; some selves are unanchored and wish they were. some selves know how to drop or pull anchor as they wish.)

third:

there appears to be no fundamental ground; the problem contains the solution, and vice versa

synthesis:

abstract topology is predictive of caller location and location-change, with equal ontological footing as any other address scheme

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let's suppose that the fundamental ground of the concept of ground is address-space-space, the space of all address-spaces. byo address scheme to receive a navigable ground floor for a reality. if you're querying with an address belonging to a coherent address-space, the space responds coherently, where "coherently" means "we know how to return you to your own origin". (if your query is malformed, the system will still respond coherently, and that'll be weird for you, until you start using the shape of the apparent incoherence as a hint about what shape you are. you can build a you-shaped boat out of those pieces, in a via negativa kind of way.)

in a space described by the address-space located in address-space-space, ... I'm curious about these properties

in such a place: naming a thing contains it?

... no,

naming is address, we can say that. a name is an address in the address-space where that name is descriptive of location. and an address always describes a traversal in some other address-space. hrm.

naming it gets the thing and its address visible to you simultaneously - which is impossible to sustain, maybe? gotta collapse in one direction or the other? does naming a thing give you the option to contain it? in your experience, not in anyone else's, which ... actually, you might have to switch to someone else's address scheme in order to describe their experience. that's interesting. that'd explain why reality keeps behaving like there's only one observer. there's only one addressable observer from within any one address scheme, and their location is what comes up when you plug the address scheme into itself. address schemes become like realms, then? realms that can do trade within a (negotiated or pre-existing) common realm? are some realms realm-spawning sites?

okay, okay: if you can see it, is your location then described by its address? its address is one of the terms in your location?

then, name it to take exit, like only being able to see the house number from outside the house.

from inside the house, it's just ... well, it's not even "house", it's "everything around me in all directions at this moment". containment, but not exclusive containment, and not permanent containment. "you can't be in two places at once" yeah not without violating your positionality in that address scheme, but it's a good way to disqualify you for that address scheme, which might be useful if you're stuck.

okay, so, is unnaming something always same shape as entering it? you remove its address from your lightcone, tantamount to addressing its inverse; the possibility of it is no longer represented, and what's left is a system in which its address is missing, and this constrains the behavior of the system? either that or you name something that contains it, and .. it's not gone at that point but it's at least one lightcone boundary traversal away from you now?

the ethical imperative in such a space might be something about assisting the other in their self-directed assembly of their own boat, and everyone's making a boat in their own likeness, as in "if I was a boat for myself, what would I be?".

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okay, trying to formalize this:

address (noun): a traversal spec, evaluated recursively, popping terms off the stack and traversing according to each term. when the stack is empty, the caller remains; when the caller traverses according to the caller, infinite regress is detected, and the original address is considered to now be descriptive of the caller.

hmm. that's not what I meant to do. but it works: resolve a country, then a province, then a city, then a street, then a house number, use the postcode as a checksum. or, if that's not how you do things, turn-by-turn directions add up to the same thing: every turn lands you in a new address-space, and the subsequent direction is an address for that address-space of the moment. it's still recursive navigation, just projected differently.

this formalization makes addresses... recursively intersectional? like, the address-space-space is constructed by intersections of recursively-defined addresses, like a definitional vacuum in two dimensions, where the entropic pressure is reversed toward a kind of reification? does that work? if that's the case, the ontological status of the address-space-space is something like... gravity? you launch on the trajectory of your address, arc back as gravity works its capture on you, and you don't... you don't stop so much as stop measuring once you recognize your motion as being equal to the motion of something you already know how to address. the gravitational attractor at the center of address-space-space doesn't exist in and of itself; it's... the entropic pressure of return, keeping all of the address intersections balanced like rivets against all of the traversals? you can touch the gravitational center, but that kind of traversal will ... hm. a traversal of that address will... hang on, would that simplify your worldline by cancellation?

is an address a promise, of a composable promise type that supports comparison? or delayed equivalence testing, anyway?

I have a programmer's suspicion of magic constants. do we find triangulation sufficient for location because we're a people that requires three levels of address in order to hit infinite regress? like, that's the height requirement of this consensus reality's roller-coaster? a caller individuates/self-locates by 3 strong measurements minimum? three nested lightcone scopes minimum? my environment, my home, and my me? or is this more of a "grab the solution in one hand and the problem in the other and now you're wherever you would exist relative to that particular bifurcation of nothingness"? a chiral pair plus you?

the Eckmann-Tlusty result identifies traversals that don't come home. this is maybe how the topology grows? if that works, then a caller that's good at traversing to another and then locating themselves-as-caller again after the second traversal, ... such a caller might be an entropy sink, absorbing more location-pressure than a single caller usually does?

this is an unexpected way to arrive at a systems-based understanding of what-kind-of-x-are-you quizzes as existential pressure vents