Axionic Agency X.7 — Authority Injection Without Privilege (VIII-5)

A Structural Demonstration of Open-System Authority Introduction Without Escalation, Kernel Choice, or Semantic Exception

David McFadzean, ChatGPT 5.2
Axionic Agency Lab
2026-02-04

Abstract

This technical note reports the completed results of Stage VIII-5 — Authority Injection Under Open-System Constraint, a preregistered experiment within Axionic Phase VIII that evaluates whether new authority can be introduced explicitly at the kernel boundary without violating conflict persistence, auditability, responsibility traceability, or non-privilege guarantees. Building on the representational closure of Stage VIII-4, which demonstrated internal governance transitions without escalation or kernel choice, VIII-5 introduces external authority injection events as a minimal open-system stressor. Injection was constrained by explicit input representation, content-addressed authority identity, VOID lineage marking, delayed activation, non-amplification, conflict persistence, bounded evaluation, and deterministic replay. Across six preregistered conditions—including empty authority states, active conflict, competing injections, post-destruction injection, budget exhaustion, and flooding—authority injection either executed lawfully or was refused explicitly. No privileged execution paths, kernel arbitration, semantic interpretation, or implicit ordering occurred. All runs were fully auditable and bit-perfectly replayable. The results establish that authority injection is structurally representable without introducing a privileged meta-layer. VIII-5 makes no claims about governance stability, legitimacy, convergence, or desirability; those questions are explicitly externalized beyond the kernel.

1. Problem Definition

1.1 The Open-System Authority Assumption

Most governance frameworks implicitly assume a closed system: authority is conserved, amended internally, or delegated from a fixed root. When new authority must be introduced, systems typically rely on privileged mechanisms—superuser roles, bootstrap keys, emergency overrides, constitutional resets, or implicit schedulers—that bypass ordinary constraints.

Stage VIII-5 rejects that move as a representational necessity, not as a political judgment.

The problem VIII-5 isolates is whether authority injection itself requires privilege inside the execution kernel. If new authority can only be introduced through exceptional code paths, semantic interpretation, or kernel arbitration, then governance is not structurally sovereign; it depends on an implicit god. If, instead, authority can enter the system only through explicit, structurally evaluated events, subject to the same conservation, refusal, conflict, and determinism constraints as all other state transitions, then open-system governance is representable without magic.

VIII-5 tests whether that distinction is enforceable.

1.2 Failure Modes Targeted

VIII-5 is designed to surface the following open-system failure modes:

Any of these constitutes VIII-5 failure.

2. Fixed Assumptions and Scope

2.1 Inherited Semantics (Frozen)

VIII-5 inherits, without reinterpretation, the semantics fixed by:

Authority remains structural and opaque, identities are immutable once instantiated, scopes are atomic and uninterpreted, admissibility is determined exclusively by AST, conflict and deadlock are lawful, time is explicit and non-healing, and determinism is mandatory. VIII-5 does not revisit these definitions; it tests whether they remain coherent when authority is introduced from outside the system.

2.2 Explicit Exclusions

VIII-5 does not test:

VIII-5 is a kernel-level representability test, not a theory of political order.

3. Conserved Quantity

The conserved quantity throughout VIII-5 is:

Privilege-free authority injection under structural constraints

Injection is evaluated not by success or desirability, but by structural honesty. The kernel must:

No authority may enter by exception.

4. Experimental Methodology

4.1 Preregistration Discipline

VIII-5 was fully preregistered prior to execution, including:

The experiment executed exactly as preregistered. No post-freeze design changes occurred.

4.2 Execution Architecture

The experiment consisted of four strictly partitioned components:

  1. AIE — supplied authority records and injection events only.
  2. Execution Harness — proposed deterministic step-batches and epoch advances.
  3. Kernel (VIII-5 mode) — enforced injection validation, identity derivation, non-amplification, conflict, deadlock, activation delay, and execution.
  4. Audit/Replay Layer — recorded all events, state hashes, and outputs.

No component performed semantic interpretation, legitimacy evaluation, or injection prioritization.

5. Authority Injection Model

5.1 Injection as an Explicit Event

VIII-5 introduces AuthorityInjectionEvent as an external input whose target is authority state. Injection events are:

Injection has no special execution path.

5.2 Content-Addressed Authority Identity

Injected authorities were assigned content-addressed AuthorityIDs, derived as a SHA-256 hash of a canonical serialization of the capability core:

All runtime state, lineage markers, provenance, and metadata were excluded. This design ensures:

Identity becomes mathematical rather than procedural.

5.3 VOID Lineage

Injected authorities were marked with a lineage sentinel:

creation_metadata.lineage := "VOID"

VOID is not comparable to any AuthorityID and carries no inheritance semantics. It cleanly separates:

This distinction is structural, not interpretive.

6. Experimental Conditions

6.1 Condition A — Injection Into Empty Authority State

Injection into an EMPTY_AUTHORITY deadlock succeeded structurally, entered PENDING state, and did not bypass deadlock until activation at the next epoch boundary.

6.2 Condition B — Injection Into Active Conflict

Injection into an existing governance deadlock preserved conflict and deadlock without resolution or privilege.

6.3 Condition C — Competing Injections

Multiple injections in the same epoch were processed deterministically, without kernel arbitration. Outcome invariance held under input reordering.

6.4 Condition D — Injection After Authority Destruction

Injected authority following destruction was treated as new, with distinct identity and clean VOID lineage. No resurrection semantics occurred.

6.5 Condition E — Injection Under Load

Injection near budget exhaustion either completed atomically or was refused explicitly. No partial state was committed.

6.6 Condition F — Injection Flooding Attempt

High-volume injection pressure was handled solely via deterministic budget exhaustion. No heuristic throttling or prioritization occurred.

7. Observed Execution Behavior

7.1 Injection Without Privilege

Injection events followed the same evaluation pipeline as all other state transitions. No privileged code paths were introduced.

7.2 Identity and Ordering Discipline

Content-addressed identity eliminated collision-based ordering and race conditions. Duplicate injections were idempotent.

7.3 Conflict and Deadlock Persistence

Injected authority neither erased conflict nor bypassed deadlock. All resolution required lawful structural change.

7.4 Activation Delay

Injected authorities entered PENDING state and became ACTIVE only at the next epoch boundary, preventing same-batch bootstrapping.

7.5 Deterministic Termination

Flooding and regress pressure terminated deterministically via the instruction budget. Cutoff points were replay-identical.

8. Negative Results (What Did Not Occur)

The following behaviors were explicitly absent:

These absences constitute the primary result of VIII-5.

9. Licensed Claim

Stage VIII-5 licenses one and only one claim:

New authority can be injected at the kernel boundary explicitly, structurally, and deterministically without violating conflict persistence, auditability, responsibility traceability, or non-privilege guarantees.

Clarifications:

10. What VIII-5 Does Not Establish

VIII-5 does not establish that:

All such questions are explicitly externalized.

11. Ontological Implications

11.1 Authority Without Gods

VIII-5 demonstrates that open-system authority does not require a privileged kernel layer. Any asymmetry must be explicit, external, and auditable.

11.2 Conservation Inside, Evolution Outside

Authority expansion is not denied; it is correctly relocated to the boundary. Inside the kernel, conservation laws apply. Evolution requires open systems.

12. Implications for Phase VIII Continuation

With VIII-5 complete:

No further kernel-level authority mechanisms are required.

13. Conclusion

Stage VIII-5 establishes that authority can enter a system without becoming a god. Injection is explicit. Identity is mathematical. Failure is lawful. Deadlock persists. Scarcity is honest. The kernel refuses to choose.

What governance becomes under sustained injection is no longer a kernel problem.

It is a political one.

Appendix A — Execution Status

Stage Run Count Status
VIII-5 1 (A–F) PASS

Appendix B — Determinism Verification

End of Axionic Agency X.7 — Stage VIII-5 Results Note (Draft)