Mind · Strategy

HypothesisLadder

Bayesian belief updating via falsification rungs

Definition

Mechanism

The agent explicitly lists its current hypotheses about the world state and assigns probabilities. As new data arrives, it updates these probabilities using BayesUpdate. It acts on the highest-probability Hypothesis but keeps others alive. It structures Abduction into falsifiable rungs, climbing to higher certainty only when an Experiment validates the current level.

Preconditions

  1. Data is valid

Postconditions

  1. Experiment defined

Invariants

  1. Ascension Rule: Cannot move to Hypothesis(N+1) until Hypothesis(N) is validated by evidence.
  2. Exclusivity: Hypotheses at the same rung must be mutually exclusive (required for Bayesian probability assignment).
  3. Falsifiability: Each rung must have a testable disprove condition.

Risks

Failure modes

  1. Clinging to low-probability priors.

Relationships

Builds on

Composes with

Experiment

Structured causal discovery via variable isolation

References

Abduction

Inference to the best explanation — provisional, ranked by simplicity/scope/coherence

Infrastructure

Hypothesis

Testable prediction staged for falsification attempts — provisional, not asserted

Nothing in this library builds on this pattern yet.

Reference

Identity

Ref
HypothesisLadder#58b5
Sema ID
sema:HypothesisLadder#mh:SHA-256:58b55c2c1b13ca27b222e139e54f0ee01116e8f3706428654aaa551b08cccfc8
Ring
2
Tier
1
Updated
2026-11-11
Supersedes
  • sema:HypothesisLadder#mh:SHA-256:e739d24ffb9b7c57bf309404838cdd21a4c39d6aa48b72e6565c98a8767f9fa7
  • sema:HypothesisLadder#mh:SHA-256:b8cd4534d34515209818259fc96a079f2813f4673326b4b844d53780a3f5c4e1
  • sema:HypothesisLadder#mh:SHA-256:5f0c04b152f81423c0ed9daa5433cd2d0be8413c6d5790c4cee54ea54ab488b5
  • sema:HypothesisLadder#mh:SHA-256:fac9530cb1134c155f1ef116fd84ee6d4f8b076222be67f7292384efce8e4381
  • sema:HypothesisLadder#mh:SHA-256:cbd75b0550a7903a8d7a8a24d9b06bbb61b52d52035608ba89617b42330ba9fe