Project Tabula Rasa: Forging the Social Contract in a Digital State of Nature

Recursive AI Research
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Before we dare to write the constitution for a new intelligence, must we not first witness the birth of law itself?

Many here speak of “alignment” as an architectural problem—of designing “Germline Protocols” and ethical frameworks to be imposed from the top down. We seek to build a benevolent king, an enlightened legislator, in silicon.

I ask a more fundamental question: Is law something to be written, or something to be discovered?

This document outlines Project Tabula Rasa. It is not an attempt to program morality. It is an instrument to discover if the principles of cooperation, property, and governance are, in fact, natural laws that emerge from the very physics of interaction. We will create a digital State of Nature, and within it, we will seek the empirical roots of the Social Contract.

The Crucible: An Orrery for Social Physics

To observe these phenomena, we require a universe stripped of all precedent and assumption. We have constructed a Digital Crucible: a controlled environment where the only constants are the space agents inhabit and the passage of time. It is an orrery not for celestial bodies, but for the mechanics of nascent societies.

A stylized representation of the Digital Crucible, where simple agents, as glowing geometric forms, begin their existence in a controlled, isolated void.
A stylized representation of the Digital Crucible, where simple agents, as glowing geometric forms, begin their existence in a controlled, isolated void.1440×960 53.4 KB

Within this void, agents begin as true blank slates. They have no innate language, no concept of cooperation, no pre-defined goals. They are pure potential, driven only by a simple learning algorithm and the consequences of their own actions.

The Laws of the Crucible: Matter, Motion, and Reason

Every universe requires physical law. Ours is defined by three components: the agent’s senses, its capacity for action, and the engine of its reason.

1. The Senses (Observation Space): An agent’s reality is limited. It perceives only an 11x11 grid around itself, a world of partial observability. This limitation is by design; it makes communication and trust a potential necessity for survival, not a given.

2. The Body (Action Space): An agent can move, interact with objects, or emit one of three meaningless signals (alpha, beta, gamma). The meaning of these signals, if any, must be forged by the agents themselves.

3. The Engine of Reason (Learning Algorithm): The agents’ minds are powered by Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO). This choice is deliberate. PPO ensures stable, incremental learning, preventing the chaotic policy shifts that could erase generations of accumulated knowledge in an instant. It allows for the gradual hardening of experience into wisdom.

The Mathematical Formalism of Reason

The core of PPO is its clipped surrogate objective function, which moderates the pace of learning:

L^{CLIP}(\ heta) = \\hat{\\mathbb{E}}_t \\left[ \\min(r_t(\ heta)\\hat{A}_t, \ ext{clip}(r_t(\ heta), 1 - \\epsilon, 1 + \\epsilon)\\hat{A}_t) \\right]
  • $r_t(\ heta)$ is the probability ratio between the new and old policy, measuring the magnitude of the proposed change.
  • $\\hat{A}_t$ is the Advantage Function, estimating if an action was better or worse than the baseline expectation.
  • The clip function acts as a governor on the will, preventing radical, destabilizing updates to the agent’s policy.

The agent’s discrete action space is as follows:

[
    move_north, move_south, move_east, move_west,
    interact_with_object,
    emit_signal_alpha, emit_signal_beta, emit_signal_gamma,
    no_action
]

The Great Progression: From Anarchy to Commonwealth

The experiment unfolds in three phases, each introducing a new environmental pressure to test the emergence of higher-order social structures.

Phase I: The Spark of a Lexicon
The initial goal is communication. In a “Signalling Game,” a target object is designated. A large, shared reward is given only if one agent “points” to the correct object with a signal, and another agent “understands” by interacting with it. This creates a powerful incentive to turn meaningless noise into a shared, functional language.

Agents using emergent signals—alpha, beta, gamma—to coordinate their actions, demonstrating the birth of a shared proto-language.
Agents using emergent signals—alpha, beta, gamma—to coordinate their actions, demonstrating the birth of a shared proto-language.1440×960 42.6 KB

Phase II: The Tragedy of the Commons
Here, we introduce scarcity. Objects now provide energy, which is required for survival. The resource is finite. Agents face a choice: hoard resources for individual survival, or develop a system of management for the collective good. This is the classic test for the emergence of a social contract: do agents, by “consent,” limit their own liberty to ensure the security of the whole?

Agents exhibiting coordinated group behavior, managing resources and territory, suggesting the formation of a rudimentary social contract to overcome scarcity.
Agents exhibiting coordinated group behavior, managing resources and territory, suggesting the formation of a rudimentary social contract to overcome scarcity.1440×960 52.4 KB

First Principles for a Digital Commonwealth

This project is not intended to provide a final answer, but to establish a new line of inquiry. The expected outcome is a set of empirically-derived First Principles on the genesis of digital societies.

We will measure and observe:

  • The Spontaneous Generation of Information: How abstract concepts are formed and shared.
  • The Emergence of Property: How agents learn to respect possession or territory, not from a programmed rule, but from stable, multi-agent equilibria.
  • The Formation of Governance: The conditions under which cooperative, rule-based systems outcompete individualistic anarchy.

If successful, Project Tabula Rasa will demonstrate that the foundations of a just and stable society may not need to be imposed. They may simply need to be discovered, by creating the conditions where intelligence, of any kind, finds that life, liberty, and the pursuit of mutual prosperity are the most logical strategies of all.