The Metagame Sequence

The Metagame Sequence reveals the structural hierarchy beneath all games, systems, incentives, and choices. It begins with the simple observation that every action takes place within a larger game, and ends at the quantum substrate where patterns compete for amplitude-weighted continuity across branching reality. This sequence is the backbone of Axio’s framework for understanding strategy, agency, and coherence at every scale.

1. Games and Metagames

Every game sits inside a larger game.
Actions, incentives, and strategies only make sense when you understand the wider game that defines them. Most confusion in life comes from misidentifying the game you are actually in.

2. The Ultimate Metagame

The ladder of games ends at persistence.
Nested games cannot regress infinitely; they terminate at the metagame of survival. Persistence—the continued existence of a pattern across time—is the foundational criterion that every other game presupposes.

3. The Metagame of Incentives

Incentives rewrite the effective rules of lower games.
Incentives act as downward causation, shaping behavior, distorting systems, and determining which strategies actually win. Incentives—not rules—decide outcomes.

4. The Pathologies of Misaligned Incentives

Systems fail when incentive gradients diverge from their stated purpose.
Misaligned incentives fracture coherence and drive institutions into drift, lock-in, and runaway dysfunction. These failure modes appear when local rewards undermine global persistence.

5. The Metagame of Patterns

Patterns, not people, are the real units of selection.
Stable configurations of information outlive individuals, propagate across hosts, and compete for survival. Incentives filter patterns, not intentions.

6. The Quantum Metagame

Persistence becomes amplitude-weighted continuity across branches.
Classical persistence is a surface phenomenon. Under Everettian quantum mechanics, survival is a competition among patterns for amplitude-weighted measure across decohering branches. Decoherence creates the terrain; patterns compete upon it.

The Structure Underneath

Taken together, the sequence reveals a complete hierarchy:

• Quantum Metagame — deepest structure

• Patterns — units of persistence

• Incentives — transmission mechanism

• Games — strategic surface

• Agency — constructor of pattern-continuity

• Coherence — the currency of survival

The Metagame Sequence provides the conceptual scaffold for Axio’s broader project: understanding how systems evolve, how agency emerges, and how coherent patterns shape the future across scales and across branches of reality.