Reality Drift — Conceptual Paper
This paper presents the Reality Drift framework as a theory of representational misalignment, operational continuity, and weakening correction. It examines how systems can remain functional and internally coherent while progressively losing corrective contact with the conditions they are meant to track, describe, or govern.
The paper develops the Representation Stack, the Drift Principle, Recursive Compression, mechanisms of corrective contact loss, Semantic Fidelity, diagnostic implications, and a correction architecture for restoring corrective contact.
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Academic Versions
Reality Drift: How Symbolic Systems Lose the Ability to Correct Themselves — PhilArchive
Reality Drift: How Symbolic Systems Lose the Ability to Correct Themselves — SSRN