The use of knowledge in open-ended systems
Abigail Devereaux, Roger Koppl
TL;DR
This paper develops an open-ended evolutionary (OEE) knowledge framework to model how observers embedded in dynamic, novelty-generating environments acquire and use knowledge. It shows that, unlike closed systems, OEE environments produce frame relativity, local and fragmented knowledge, and the impossibility of universal common knowledge, enabling phenomena like agree-to-disagree and the significance of nonlogical search (e.g., aesthetics, heuristics). The framework clarifies how theory revision is continual and non-convergent, with adjacent possible states expanding the knowable space and Gödelian undecidability constraining what any individual can prove. The results have broad implications for economic thought, suggesting institutions and cultural codes arise to coordinate fragmented knowledge under radical uncertainty and nonergodic progress, beyond traditional rational-choice models.
Abstract
Economists model knowledge use and acquisition as a cause-and-effect calculus associating observations made by a decision-maker about their world with possible underlying causes. Knowledge models are well-established for static contexts, but not for contexts of innovative and unbounded change. We develop a representation of knowledge use and acquisition in open-ended evolutionary systems and demonstrate its primary results, including that observers embedded in open-ended evolutionary systems can agree to disagree and that their ability to theorize about their systems is fundamentally local and constrained to their frame of reference what we call frame relativity. The results of our framework formalize local knowledge use, the many-selves interpretation of reasoning through time, and motivate the emergence of nonlogical modes of reasoning like institutional and aesthetic codes.