Derivation Status

What's solid, what's assumed, what's still open.

Every claim in Survivor Field Theory carries an explicit status tag — nothing is presented as settled that isn't. Below is the aggregate picture, then a breakdown across each of the theory's eight postulates. This is a simplified public read of a much more detailed technical record; nothing here is hidden, just distilled.

MASTER DOCUMENT v48 · CONSOLIDATED AUG 27, 2026
Aggregate — the theory as a whole
DerivedProven from the postulates already in hand.
Partial / ConditionalA mechanism is identified but rests on an unproven assumption.
PostulatedAssumed outright, not yet derived from anything deeper.
Conjecture / OpenProposed, still neither proven nor disproven.
EliminatedTested and formally ruled out — kept on the record, not deleted.

Computed as a simple average across the eight postulates' own status breakdowns below — the same method used on the full Derivation Dashboard. Treat it as a compass, not a scoreboard; the eight breakdowns below are the more meaningful read.

By Postulate

Eight postulates, each tagged honestly

P1The Pre-Geometric Substrate

S = a discrete, non-spatial set of algebraic configurations, prior to space, time, or Hilbert space.

Before there is space or time, there's just a bare collection of abstract mathematical objects. Everything else in the theory — including space and time themselves — has to be built up from this set.

POSTULATED 65% · CONJECTURE/OPEN 35%
P2The Substrate Interaction Tensor

C_ij = W_ij + iΓ_ij: complex-Hermitian coupling between substrate elements.

Elements of the substrate influence each other through a two-part coupling number. This coupling is what eventually looks like a force once the theory is coarse-grained into recognizable physics.

DERIVED 65% · POSTULATED 35%
P3Second-Order Damped Dynamics

A second-order, damped-oscillator equation, plus a stabilizing correction term.

Each part of the substrate behaves like a damped oscillator, decaying unless something stabilizes it. Which correction actually makes stable "survivors" possible is still an open, actively-tested question.

DERIVED 45% · POSTULATED 20% · ELIMINATED 15% · CONJECTURE/OPEN 20%
P4Sparsity / Bounded Degree

May's stability criterion + random matrix theory: coupling must be sparse and bounded-degree.

Each element can only meaningfully couple to a limited number of neighbors, not the whole substrate. Without this limit, the dynamics would be chaotic rather than settling into any stable structure.

DERIVED 100%
P5Lorentzian Signature (3,1)

Clifford-algebra classification (Bott periodicity) selects real signature (3,1) over (2,2).

Of all the ways the substrate's internal algebra could split into space-like and time-like pieces, one split — three space directions, one time direction — is the one this theory's math points to. That conclusion currently rests on a choice made elsewhere in the theory (Postulate 8) that hasn't itself been derived, which is why the tag below reads conditional rather than derived.

CONDITIONAL 100%
P6Dimensional Floor (n ≥ 4)

Vortex/homotopy and chirality-parity constraints jointly force a dimensional floor of n ≥ 4.

Stable topological defects and a working notion of handedness both need room to exist in. The algebra derives a floor of at least four dimensions — the case for exactly four is real but still conditional, not a separate, stronger result.

DERIVED 35% · CONDITIONAL 65%
P7Triadic Substrate Postulate (SU(3) sector)

Algebraic triads of substrate elements rotating through an internal 8-dimensional space.

If the strong nuclear force shows up in this theory, it has to come from triplets of elements twisting together in a specific internal space. Most of this sector is on firm footing; the piece that isn't is flagged accordingly.

DERIVED 55% · CONDITIONAL 25% · POSTULATED 5% · CONJECTURE/OPEN 15%
P8Bipartite Clifford-Valued Chiral Coupling

A bipartite, Clifford-algebra-valued chiral coupling recovering Dirac-type dispersion and signature-selection.

To get particle-like behavior with a built-in left/right handedness (fermions), an extra layer of algebraic structure is needed on top of the basic coupling — whether it's truly required, or a well-motivated addition, is still open.

DERIVED 10% · CONDITIONAL 75% · POSTULATED 15%
A question that keeps coming back

Adjacency-before-geometry

Deriving how the substrate is connected — its adjacency structure — already presupposes some notion of "nearness," which is exactly the thing space is supposed to explain. This is a structural circularity, not a fine-tuning gap, and it's one SFT shares with other pre-geometric approaches to physics, including causal set theory.

It's been attacked from many directions across dozens of sessions — most recently through v48, using techniques borrowed from holography, the octonion algebra's own internal geometry, causal-set theory, string theory, condensed-matter physics, and most recently a growth rule that actively steers outward using the algebra's own core quantity, plus a direct proof that the algebra's own symmetry group can never single out a preferred direction by itself, on any construction (the substrate keeps coming back looking like an ordinary expander graph rather than a genuinely local one, under every construction tried so far — nine independent versions now, and counting). None of these attempts have closed it. It's logged as a permanent open entry, not quietly dropped between versions.

For physicists

The breakdown above is deliberately simplified. The physicist layer has the full postulate wording, the complete status history addendum-by-addendum, and the theory's falsifiable predictions — the technical detail this page leaves out.

Enter the Physicist Layer →