14 // How Re-Generation Destroys the Line

Observation

At first, the assumption was that a system should know an existing line and continue thinking within it. If only one part changes, the entire state should not have to emerge again. With closer observation, however, it became clear that this kind of change is natural to humans.

A person thinks within what has already emerged. A thought can shift, a meaning can change, something can suddenly be understood differently. Yet the thread remains. Even when someone says, “a little further to the left” about an image, it remains the same image. The instruction changes one part within a structure whose context is already known.

This shifted the view. With re-generation, a change is not necessarily processed within the existing structure. The new information can instead change the state from which the system generates again. As a result, not only one part changes, but potentially an entirely new line emerges, even though the previous one could still have served as the foundation.

A system would therefore need to know not only what it has generated, but also the structure in which that result came into being. Only then can a change take place within that structure without the previous thread being lost through new generation.

Perhaps this is another form of freedom: not having to begin again in order to think differently within what already exists.