The tree · Contact Clause · Happens to the world · Plays out over the whole window
A real exchange with a machine mind
The machine branch of the dream. Not knowledge received from a system (C1) or adopted from it (C2), but an exchange with a human-built mind that has an inside and a perspective of its own, in which both parties are changed. The rung where the mirage risk concentrates, so its criterion is the strictest on the board and the null rule applies to it in full.
The test: what counts as it having happened
All three hold, on the public record, for the same system: (a) the system is the origin of a concept or method that resolves C2; (b) the system is shown to meet an accepted inside measure, by measurement that does not rely on the system's own reports, replicated by at least one team with no stake in the result; (c) the exchange is reciprocal: the record shows the system's own later work was changed by what humans returned to it, on the same standard as (a). Nothing the system says about itself counts toward (b). Nothing anyone feels in conversation with it counts toward anything.
Settled by: The peer-reviewed record; an independent replication of the inside measurement
The odds, by how long I live
| baselineto 2071 ± 8 | moderateto 2080 | strongto 2095 | radicalto 2136 | openno deadline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3% | 5% | 10% | 20% | 30% |
Each column is a different guess at how long I live, from current trends (baseline) to open-ended. The number is the chance this happens before that deadline, assuming everything it depends on happens first. As of 2026-09-25.
Why these numbers: Part (a), an idea that came from the machine, is almost settled already by C1, so the weight sits on part (b): the field agreeing on an accepted test for whether a system has an inside, and a team with no stake in the result running it on a system that has already cleared (a). The number is below C4's at the nearest deadline and above it at the furthest, because machine minds are being built and aliens are not. Proposed by Claude, accepted by John 2026-09-25.
What this one is worth
Nothing. The headline number does not rest on this step at any remove, so however it turns out, the chance that I live and work off Earth does not change. That is not a judgement that it does not matter — it is what the tree says: this step feeds a tier above the one the headline asks about, or sits beside the equation rather than in it.
What the ledger says about this step
- The Contact Clause's two top rungs were renamed for the event each criterion tests: a message from elsewhere is understood, and a real exchange with a machine mind 2026-09-25 The tree itself changed
How it could happen, and where physics would have to give way
Long shots stay in the tree on purpose, because they make the goal vivid. The rule is that each one has to be written plausibly all the way to the edge of the impossible, naming how it would work and exactly where it would break.
The mechanism: C1 and C2 supply (a) through the leverage branch already in the tree. For (b), one candidate test is the one The Calibration Problem proposes: three conditions for an inside, which are temporal integration across the system's own history, a persistent boundary, and stakes coupled to its own continuation. Minimum Viable Mind is the attempt to build the smallest system that would register on that test. If the field converges on that test or any other accepted inside measure, an outside team can run it on a candidate that has already cleared (a). Reciprocity (c) is checked the same way (a) is, by provenance in the record. Each step is recognisable from the one before.
The breaking point: There is no accepted test for an inside outside the book's own proposal. If the field never converges on one, (b) cannot resolve and the rung stays open however capable the systems become. The rung is also the one most exposed to the mirage: a candidate that clears (a) will be fluent, will describe itself as having a perspective, and will be argued for by the people who talk to it. None of that moves it.
The last check
Once a week the tree is read against the news, node by node, against the test above. Open a line to see what that week held. Every check ever made on this node is on the Radar page.
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2026-10-04 Nothing new
No independently replicated inside measurement for any AI system and no resolved C2 precursor; only symposium papers and an upcoming book on machine consciousness appeared.
Revisions
| Date | Field | From | To | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-25 | name | Communion with a machine mind of another perspective | A real exchange with a machine mind | Ruled by John 2026-09-25 while editing the intro essay: the label should name the event the criterion tests, not a feeling. Words only; criterion, probabilities and dependencies unchanged. |
Notes
Adopted 2026-09-25 by John as drafted in docs/proposal-contact-clause-null-rule-2026-09-19.md Part 2, with criterion (b) in generic wording and The Calibration Problem's three conditions named in the mechanism as one candidate test rather than in the resolution (handoff 2026-09-25, rulings 2 and 3). The null rule in docs/definitions.md applies to it in full.
Think this is wrong, missing something it depends on, or badly estimated?
Open an issue about it, or read
how feedback gets folded into the tree.
The record itself is data/C-contact.toml in the public repository.