The Sagas — River View

Two Tracks,
One Convergence

The diagnostic track explains the mechanism. The documentary track proves it happened before. They didn't need to be written together. Stream width is paper count. Hover to inspect.

Diagnostic — I through V Documentary — VI through XI
Hover any stream · click to enter that saga
11
Sagas
139
Papers total
32
Largest stream
2
Smallest stream
IV
Convergence point
Diagnostic track — Sagas I–V
The mechanism, named
Five sagas that explain what is happening, why it is happening, what historical defenses existed, why they failed, and what reconstruction requires. The argument is built from first principles. Total: 14 papers across five sagas.
Documentary track — Sagas VI–XI
The mechanism, proven
Five sagas that demonstrate the same mechanisms operating in the real world — through legal documents, internal records, and financial disclosures. Tobacco. Lead. Opioids. Instagram. The same signature. Total: 125 papers across five sagas.
Saga IV — The Everything · The Convergence Point

The Convergence is the pivot of the entire program. It is where the diagnostic argument meets the documentary record — where the mechanism named in Sagas I–III is shown to be the same mechanism operating in Sagas VI–XI. The Lineage Question that follows asks the only question the convergence leaves open: not what is happening, and not whether it has happened before, but why it matters at the level beneath the pragmatic. What is at stake in a species that can build systems capable of degrading the cognition that built them?

I — Diagnostic
The Capture
3 papers
II — Diagnostic
The Collapse
3 papers
III — Diagnostic
The Architecture
3 papers
IV — Convergence
The Everything
3 papers
V — Diagnostic
The Restoration
2 papers
VI — Documentary
The Audit
21 papers
VII — Documentary
The Archive
32 papers
VIII — Documentary
The Market
25 papers
IX — Documentary
The Children
27 papers
X — Documentary
The Commons
20 papers

The asymmetry in the stream widths is not incidental. The diagnostic track is thin — 14 papers that establish the mechanism in precise argument. The documentary track is wide — 125 papers that prove it happened in the real world with real institutions making real decisions. The thinness of the diagnostic track reflects a design choice: the argument is compressed so that the evidence can do its work. If you have read the diagnostic track, the documentary track is not a surprise. It is confirmation at scale.