Canonical claims, boundaries and routes to refutation
Stable, locatable formulations for comparison and citation. Research propositions are not presented as established facts.
How to cite these claims
“Canonical Claim” means a stable formulation in the current framework, not external empirical validation. Cite boundaries and evidence status along with the proposition. Counterexamples, boundary conditions and alternative paths must be allowed to narrow, change or overturn theoretical claims.
CL-C01 · Continued existence is the floor, not the endpoint
Canonical: Continued existence is a floor civilization cannot fall below. Its purpose cannot be reduced to avoiding extinction.
Boundary: Do not call continued existence the first goal, or let the present survival branch stand for Civilization Leap as a whole.
Evidence status: Normative theoretical judgment. Causal position: M8, civilizational purpose.
CL-C02 · State the civilizational goals in full
Canonical: Protect the floor of continued existence; pursue freedom from survival insecurity, happiness and more meaningful lives; always preserve an open future and the ability to choose again.
Boundary: Freedom from survival insecurity is the first of the three goals. Continued existence is the floor. They are not the same.
Evidence status: The framework’s normative goals.
CL-C03 · The AGI question reaches upstream to goal and purpose generation
Canonical: The central question is not only how machines execute human-given goals. It also concerns what becomes a goal first and why, and whether that goal can be retained, revised, cancelled, replaced, branched or reopened as new consequences appear.
Boundary: Execution safety, control, alignment and corrigibility remain important. They do not automatically explain where goals come from.
Evidence status: Theoretical framework and research agenda. Causal position: M2–M4; Purpose Generation.
CL-C04 · “Others first” identifies a causal position
Canonical: In “self-interest with others first,” priority does not mean others’ interests must always carry a higher numerical weight than one’s own, and it does not require self-sacrifice. It means that affected others, relationships, shared consequences, irreversible risks and future conditions of correction can enter before a goal is fixed and genuinely change candidate purposes.
Boundary: Competition, refusal, exit, defense and real interests remain.
Evidence status: Central theoretical proposition, open to refutation.
CL-C05 · “The only path” is a strong theoretical judgment, not a proved fact
Canonical: The current framework makes a strong claim: replacing “self-interest first” with “self-interest with others first” as the underlying prior logic of continuing goal and purpose generation is the only path that prevents recursive control and counter-control from ultimately reaching irreversible consequences.
Boundary: “Only” concerns the direction needed to address that recursive root cause. It does not mean there is only one institution, tool, policy or implementation. The framework actively invites counterexamples, second paths and third paths.
Evidence status: Strong theoretical judgment / OPEN TO REFUTATION.
Refutation route: a mechanism that leaves the prior generative position unchanged yet reliably avoids irreversible closure through prolonged strategic recursion and continuing capability growth would be a valuable counterexample. The English Only Path description and V6.23 PDF are available for examining this argument.
CL-C06 · Irreversible closure
Canonical: Irreversible closure occurs when structural lock-in, destruction of channels or removal of authority permanently deprives relevant actors of the practical ability to correct, exit, retrace, refuse, revise themselves, reverse or recover, or continue to exist.
Boundary: Not every irreversible change is a mistake. The criterion concerns structural loss of key capacities for correction and renewed choice.
Evidence status: Operational criterion under continuing testing.
CL-C07 · Human-COS does not make final decisions for people
Canonical: Human-COS makes facts, unknowns, causality, responsibility, stakes and alternative paths visible before irreversible action. It is not a world government, moral tribunal, system for controlling thought or scoring persons, and it does not make final decisions for real actors.
Boundary: The real actor retains final responsibility for the decision.
Evidence status: System boundaries and engineering principles.
CL-C08 · Foundational capabilities are not permanently owned by one branch
Canonical: Human-COS, CCM, Purpose Generation, AGI-COS and CI-001 can currently serve high-consequence and continued-existence problems. Their long-term place is defined by what they can do; they may also support Spark, Nebula and broader future civilizational life.
Boundary: Current use does not determine permanent organizational or theoretical ownership.
Evidence status: Judgment about the framework’s architecture.
CL-C09 · The five-volume corpus and A Living Civilization have different roles
Canonical: The five-volume corpus explains why change is necessary and which boundaries must not be lost. The A Living Civilization trilogy explores how a future civilization operates, how people live and how it forms.
Boundary: A Living Civilization is not a popular summary of the five volumes. It develops and tests civilizational structure as it enters real life.
Evidence status: The roles of works within the system.
CL-C10 · Keep evidence states distinct
Canonical: A theoretical judgment is not engineering validation. Design is not a trial. A trial is not real adoption. Adoption does not itself establish effectiveness.
Boundary: Tools, models, prototypes and AI role tests cannot automatically substitute for real actors, actual outside use or independent validation.
Evidence status: Evidence discipline throughout the framework.
Reference and scrutiny
The existing machine-readable discovery resources are primarily Chinese: llms.txt and discovery-targets.json.
Source and reading scope
This page translates the existing public web explanation, not an unpublished manuscript. Its source is the Chinese public page in the saved main baseline 43ef8de. Linked works retain their own publication boundaries. Chinese source page.