Degree of Domain Independence

The measure behind the Golden Thread: the deeper and higher an element is, the more domains it holds in — and the more local it is, the fewer.

Some things are true only here. Some are true in this trade, or in this century, or for people shaped this way. And some hold wherever anything holds at all. The degree to which something survives being moved out of its home domain is a property worth measuring, and this names it (Levels of Abstraction, General Pattern, Specific Application, Pattern).

Its immediate use is as a sorting instrument. Given any claim, practice, or rule, ask how far it travels. A deeply domain-independent thing belongs in a pattern language, a seed, a founding agreement — it will still be right somewhere nobody here has been (The LIØNSBERG Pattern Language, The Golden Seed, The First 999 Concepts). A domain-dependent thing belongs in a play, a local agreement, a season's plan — and treating it as universal is how a body exports its own accidents as law (Play, Individual And Local, Do Not Concretize the Absolute).

It also explains the cascade the corpus keeps describing: from the one, the archetypes; from the archetypal, the prototypical; from the prototypical, the local instantiations, adapted to where they land. Each step downward gains fit and loses reach, and neither end is better (Archetype, Prototype, Instantiation, The Creative Cascade).

Which makes it the mechanism under The Golden Thread. Traditions differ most at the surface and converge as you descend, not because someone made them agree but because the deeper elements have fewer places they could differ (ReHarvesting the Great Traditions, Meta Unity of Meta Diversity).

The failure it guards against runs in both directions. Mistaking something local for something universal produces imperialism with good intentions. Mistaking something universal for something local produces a body that keeps rediscovering what was already known (Ideological Capture, Weaving vs. Starting New, Convergent Streams of Discovery).

Named as a concept in its source and never given a definition line; what is here is drawn from its two uses.

Also called: domain independence · how far it travels Stands on: Levels of Abstraction · Pattern · General Pattern, Specific Application Opens onto: The Golden Thread · Archetype · Prototype · Instantiation · The LIØNSBERG Pattern Language · The Creative Cascade · Do Not Concretize the Absolute · One tool, every scale In play: the Workshop — asked of anything before it is written into a pattern or a rule Sources: LIØNSBERG Wiki Books/Pass The Flame… §III and §VI (draft — named as a concept, never defined) Open: No method is given for actually assessing the degree, which is what would make it an instrument rather than a distinction. · The claim that depth and universality rise together is asserted and has obvious counter-cases nothing addresses.