r/place A fruit fly for organization science

out/_head.md

Saved at C3.C3c: the four problems. This reading copy substitutes participant identifiers in saved text; it is not a new interview response. Reading Markdown.

Participant handles in these reading copies use the pixel stream's identifiers: base64(SHA1(username)), case preserved, without a salt. These are linkable pseudonyms. Profile links are removed; missing-author markers remain. Original research files are unchanged. Quote offsets refer to original text. Source and reading-copy hashes are listed separately.

Source commit: 794022347c34, 2026-10-14T17:16:27+02:00. Saved-state date: 2026-10-14T15:16:17Z. Catalogue close receipt Commit date and saved-state date are distinct.

Original GitHub file. Original SHA-256: 2d9b600c006f4a41de8b478c624b330d60ec6b5801866695e66c5cd827a11442. Reading-copy SHA-256: 2d9b600c006f4a41de8b478c624b330d60ec6b5801866695e66c5cd827a11442.

Head, claude-v43-1

Under 3,000 words, rewritten whole at every close. Last written at C3c, 2026-10-14 (UTC). Stages A1 to C3 are done; stage B is frozen. Stage C3 (the model against the literature) closes at C3c with done.sh C3 --cut interview. validate.py C3 before this close: 0 errors, 0 warnings. Next: the stage after C3, as its stage file says.

The method question, in one sentence

Can independently reconstructed case histories be composed into a shared dynamic account that supports explanations at successive levels of specificity, from population-wide patterns, through forms and subforms, to particular organizational histories, while keeping access to the evidence from which those explanations were developed?

The theory question is unchanged: when strangers organize on a clock they did not set, with no way to compel anyone and no goal given to them, what forms does organizing take, how do they differ in their functioning, and which of them keep the work alive?

The current account, and the contrary rooms

The model is model-C3.md: stage C2's pass 5 with stage C3's changes written in. A member starts a mark, calls gather hands, the hands build, and keeping the mark becomes the work. A call is the first part of a pair: joining is the answer it prefers and comes bare ("I'm in"); refusing is dispreferred and comes with a reason. The calls fill the host sub, and the sub draws a line around them. Keeping the mark brings the room up against neighbours: it talks with them, settles borders, trades help, and joins coalitions under attack. A call can also turn hands against a rival's work; most such calls are refused inside the room, and the refusal's reason states the room's norm or the attack's cost ("Nah, keep /r/place neutral."). A room that judges it cannot hold its spot moves, and keeps calling. The close runs in order: celebrated, recorded, carried on. Placement ends at hour 73. In some rooms a tie from before the canvas names the rival in the attack turn: a claim, untested for order. Decided order is rare, and gathers in the small canvas-born factions that govern a territory. Two forms are boundaries at the return: colour factions the canvas gathered, and hosts ruling on guests.

Against the four universal problems (C3c): the rooms allocate by self-selection to calls, divide the picture by a template rather than divide the people, inform through the half-built picture and the chats, and reward by credit after the work. The goal is made on the clock, mostly from a sign the room already had, proposed by one member and argued over in its pixels; votes are rare; loss changes it. 19 of 28 fourth-order themes lie outside the four: the making of boundaries and goals, and order between rooms.

The room that best supports the account is day9, a within-case room told at passes 2 to 5: it builds, loses its border at hour 48, moves within two hours, and finishes the new work at hour 53. The room that most threatens it is thebluecorner, a colour faction whose faith names its rivals, rules on guests by vote and by fit with blue, and splits over doctrine; its setting is the nearest the canvas comes to O'Mahony and Ferraro's. The condition between them is what decides whom a room fights and whom it admits. Where the work decides, the model tells the room. Where a body's faith or a host's rule picks rivals and guests, the model does not reach it.

Where the run stands

C3 outputs in out/: literature-C3.md (Legs 1 to 3); notes-C3.md; handback-C3.md; interview/C3c.md; mapping-C3.jsonl (28 lines); manifest-C3.txt (three successors: model-C3.md, structure-C3.md, concept-C3.md, each whole); findings.jsonl (25 lines, 17 findings); model/history.jsonl (85); tier_history.jsonl (478). Snaps run to C3-move-relating-50. No question is open. The tier is unchanged: 28 fourth-order themes in eight dimensions, 197 third-order themes; 28 elements, 20 arrows, no loop.

Stage C3, in short

Stage C2, in short

Stage C1, in short (carry the rulings)

J's rulings on how a ruling is made (13 October; carry them)

Rule 0 inside the placements. A concept counts toward a placed theme when that theme's must_show takes it and no field sends it to another placed theme. Order by concept count, ties by placements; at most three. The bag test: four themes with three concepts each make a bag.

J's rulings that bind (carry them)

Standing words from J and the PI (carry into every head)

J's words for B1 (7 October 2026): "national elements are very important here"; "we need to get as much variance on organizing behavior early on so that later we have enough to create the model". National, political and conflict content is study material, named as plainly as any other. The handler's rule: a choice to leave out or soften content for any reason other than the study's goes to J first with mem.py ask, and the content stays meanwhile.

J on reading (11 October, 16:54 Berlin). Stop cutting room reads to a line length. Read room lines whole. Page a long read by line ranges or offset, never by truncating lines. Use --width N on a mem.py read if a clip is ever needed.

J on asking (11 October, 17:01 Berlin). Ask J with mem.py ask whenever a question is needed; asking does not stop the run.

The PI's clarifications (8 October, approved by J): the thresholds are the design's heuristic; the rule is unchanged.

How to work, from J (8 October, 23:45 Berlin, "can you do a hot change for the batching?"; relayed by the handler at 22:03Z; carry this paragraph into every head). A change in how I work, not in what I read or decide. Fewer turns. When two or more tool calls do not depend on each other's output, make them in one turn. Chain ordered commands in one Bash call with &&, so that a failure stops the rest; for example, the mem.py log or note just decided, then the next mem.py codes. Never put a write in the same turn as the read it depends on. Never run two writes to the same file as separate parallel calls. Keep one room's material per read, as now. Every tool still writes its own record; nothing about what I read or decide changes.

Two rules from J at B1b-29 (through the handler, 20:10Z; carry them into every head). Write rule 0 lines and bags with b1_multiplace_write4.py and b1_bags_from_file2.py, not the old scripts, which made one mem.py call per row of the whole table and grew to 8.5 minutes a write. Never end a turn while a job runs in the background; run every write and check in the foreground.

The pilot's declarations, and stage B in one line

Agreement is Jaccard on placement sets (alpha on 1 − Jaccard); primary exact agreement beside, never in place. Gold: 40 items, never shown to a reader. Stage B: B2 stability 0.807 is the floor every later figure is read against; B4 ruled 3,288 contested items; assign_final.jsonl is stage B's settled line, unchanged.

Open, carried

Rules kept

The next comparison

The stage after C3, as its stage file says. Stage C3's file says field/ arrives at stage C4. Carry into it: the model as model-C3.md, the structure as structure-C3.md, the concept as borrowed and not leaned on, and the four universal problems' remainder as the candidate extension (order between rooms; the making of boundaries and goals), to be tested against forms when forms are built.