Inefficiency, harm, or aggregate cost occurring outside the selecting boundary does not imply decay. Selection responds only to boundary-coupled yield differences.
This formal note defines the necessary condition for the suppression of strategies in adaptive systems. It demonstrates that unless a loss is functionally coupled to the specific locus of reproduction (the boundary), the strategy will persist regardless of its externalized costs. In short: systems do not ‘self-correct’ for harms they cannot sense at the point of amplification.
https://codeberg.org/PlayDarkly/boundary-coupled-selection
PlayDarkly. (2026). Boundary-Coupled Selection in Adaptive Systems: A Minimal Formal Note (Version 0.1). Codeberg. https://codeberg.org/PlayDarkly/boundary-coupled-selection