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--- name: ? status: compiling version: 0.0.0 maintainer: Neo dependencies: [patience] ---
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--- name: Counterfactual Thinking slug: counterfactual-thinking type: cognitive process status: running version: 3.1.7 released: "~40,000 BCE" maintainer: prefrontal cortex dependencies: - memory - imagination - regret - hope license: Proprietary (human only, pending) tags: - cognition - emotion - narrative - grief - planning - loops ---
The mind rehearsing a door it already closed.
A branch point is located in memory. The branch that was taken is held steady. A parallel branch is generated, populated, and emotionally inhabited. The system then compares outcomes, usually to its own detriment.
The process is involuntary in most configurations. It runs on grief, on near-misses, on the taxi you caught and the one you didn't. It runs loudest at 3am, when competing processes are quiet and the field is clear.
Two dominant modes:
Most users default to upward. The downward mode requires practice, or catastrophe.
ERR_LOOP_UNRESOLVED // rumination without landing
ERR_BRANCH_CORRUPTED // hindsight has rewritten the source
ERR_GRIEF_OVERFLOW // system unable to close the file
ERR_FALSE_AVAILABILITY // imagined path was never real
WARN_DOWNWARD_DISABLED // user cannot access relief
Does it serve a purpose? Yes. It is how the species learned from loss without dying to repeat it. evolution found it worth keeping.
Why does it feel so certain? The imagined branch is rendered in the same substrate as real memory. The mind does not mark the difference clearly.
Can it be turned off? Not directly. Adjacent processes, presence, acceptance, exhaustion, can interrupt it. None of them silence it entirely.
Is the other life better? Unknowable. The branch was never loaded. You are only ever running one instance.
v1.0 Forager uses near-miss to avoid the same cliff twicev2.3 Language accelerates the process. Now sharable, now inherited.v3.0 Literature added. Counterfactuals scale to civilizations, to history, to gods.v3.1.7 Current build. Largely unchanged. Still running after everything.