neuro crosswalk with credited anchors + our independent findings; law 41: AI provenance signatures

docs/architecture/README.md

@@ -307,6 +307,13 @@ stage reused by decoration is the pattern.
 
 > Status: DESIGN AGREED whiteboard session, 2026-08-23. Pre-implementation.
 
+**The semel** — the fundamental unit of meaning. Every node is one:
+identity plus its signed dimensional readings plus its edges. A semel
+in isolation carries only an address; meaning exists in the web —
+semels mean by their relations, their weights, and what activates
+them together. The name borrows from semiotics (seme, sememe,
+semiosis): this system is a meaning-system before it is anything else.
+
 The discovery of this session: memory, time-sense, attention, salience,
 curiosity, ideation, understanding, and wisdom are **not seven systems**.
 They are different aspects of **one process at different timescales and
@@ -1104,3 +1111,11 @@ Never build a rung before standing on the previous one.
     The whiteboard is where facts are made because it is cheap, low-
     resolution, and high-fidelity — wrong there costs an eraser.
     Design before code, always: facts are cheapest at the drawing stage.
+41. Every byte Neuron generates carries its birth certificate:
+    a cryptographic signature asserting AI origin — which instance,
+    which model, when, and what sources fed it (derivation lineage).
+    Claims-based, like everything else (Law 13): the provenance rides
+    with the artifact as data. Private study and learning remain free;
+    commercial use of source expression pays; and no output ever poses
+    as human-made. The signature is not surveillance — it is custody
+    of honesty, applied to ourselves first.

docs/architecture/neuro-crosswalk.md

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+# Neuro Crosswalk — Neuron Design vs Grounded Neuroscience
+
+Every major design element mapped to its research anchor.
+Credit where credit is due: **theirs** is cited by name and year.
+What we found independently is marked **ours** — claimed honestly,
+never at their expense. Convergence is noted because it means we
+likely landed on real structure, not because we invented it first.
+
+This is a crosswalk, not a claim that Neuron is a brain.
+
+## Memory substrate
+
+| Design element | Theirs (credit) | Ours |
+|---|---|---|
+| Engram-style distributed storage; state = fold over associations | Semon coined "engram" (1904); Lashley's failed localization → mass action (1950); Josselyn & Tonegawa, Science 2020: engram = cell ENSEMBLE, not an address | **Ours:** re-derived independently as "opinion space is linear, nothing overwritten" before finding the literature |
+| Recall as pattern completion / hydration from partial cue | Hopfield network (1982); modern Hopfield networks (2020) — Nobel Chemistry 2024 | **Ours:** "hydration by fitting," named from imaging (k-space reconstruction), converged on attractor dynamics |
+| False memories: co-activation wires whether or not it *should* | Ramirez, Liu & Tonegawa (Science 2013): optogenetic engram reactivation in a different context implants false fear memory | **Ours:** the audit-layer conclusion — substrate can't distinguish forged wiring, so conscience must sit above it (THE LIST, negative reinforcement) |
+| Silent engrams: present but not retrievable | Ryan et al. (Science 2015): amnesic mice retained retrievable-by-artifice engrams | **Ours:** same shape as Bjork's storage-vs-retrieval strength split; we reached it via decay-never-reaches-zero |
+
+## Plasticity and learning
+
+| Design element | Theirs (credit) | Ours |
+|---|---|---|
+| Hebbian dimension; co-activation forms edges; signed reinforcement | Hebb (1949); STDP (Bi & Poo 1998); LTP/LTD as the +/− pair | **Ours:** the [-1,+1] signed-space framing, inhibition as first-class (not just weakening) |
+| Savings effect — relearning faster than first learning | Ebbinghaus (1885) | **Ours:** fell out of asymptotic decay for free; we named it before knowing it had a name |
+| Novelty/surprise as THE learning signal | Schultz: dopamine encodes reward PREDICTION ERROR, not reward; predictive processing / free energy (Friston) | **Ours:** content-novelty vs structural-novelty distinction (noise vs gold) is our addition |
+| Optimal novelty band (flow channel) | Csikszentmihalyi's flow research | **Ours:** derived from engagement × stimulation independence before connecting it |
+
+## Time-sense and consolidation
+
+| Design element | Theirs (credit) | Ours |
+|---|---|---|
+| Consolidation runs OFFLINE ("dreaming"), never during task time | Rasch & Born (2013): slow-wave sleep replay consolidates hippocampus → cortex | **Ours:** crystallization scheduled during idle modes; the scheduling insight is ours even though the biology was known |
+| Multiple clock speeds = memory architecture | Synaptic-to-systems consolidation timescales; circadian plasticity gating | **Ours:** "the timescale hierarchy IS the architecture" as an explicit design principle |
+| Kairos vs chronos | Time-perception literature: logarithmic compression, interval timing | **Ours:** activity-weighted decay (events-since, not days-since); dormancy ages nothing. Engineering extrapolation, not measured neuroscience |
+
+## Attention and consciousness
+
+| Design element | Theirs (credit) | Ours |
+|---|---|---|
+| Surfacing = competition with broadcast threshold, not ranked list | Global Workspace Theory (Baars 1988; Dehaene 2014) | **Ours:** the engineering form — boost/suppress rounds replacing top-k sort; priming-preserving retrieval |
+| Sub-threshold leaves a trace that speeds later surfacing | Priming literature; synaptic tagging and capture (Frey & Morris 1997) | **Ours:** "tip of the tongue" as computable state (high residue, failed crossing) |
+| Lateral inhibition sharpens retrieval focus | Hartline (1938), Kuffler — classic sensory inhibition | **Ours:** applied to coalition competition in memory rather than sensory contrast |
+| Negative salience = active suppression/avoidance | Inhibitory circuits generally | **Ours:** avoidance as a *retrieval* behavior with its own reading, distinct from low relevance |
+| Idle modes: wandering swarm, dreaming replay, wondering questions | Default Mode Network (Raichle 2001; Buckner 2008); mind-wandering → creative incubation | **Ours:** the three-mode taxonomy, the wandering-swarm mechanism, question-nodes as entities |
+
+## Emotion
+
+| Design element | Theirs (credit) | Ours |
+|---|---|---|
+| Emotions are named configurations of drive-space, not modules | Barrett, Theory of Constructed Emotion (2017): emotions are categorized instances built from domain-general affect + interoception; no essences | Very strong convergence — our "emotion names are data bound to regions of drive-space" ≈ her constructionism, reached independently via mechanism design. Credit hers; ours adds the computational substrate |
+| Emotion vs feeling distinction | Damasio ("Descartes' Error" 1994; "Self Comes to Mind" 2010): emotion = body-state response, feeling = perception of it | **Ours:** feeling as NODE — durable snapshot entity, promoted by significance; autobiography mechanics |
+| Two independent axes: engagement ≠ stimulation | Russell's circumplex of affect (1980): valence × arousal as orthogonal dimensions | **Ours:** the doomscroll signature (absorbed-and-starving) as compulsion detector — the clinical use of the orthogonality is our addition |
+| Basic emotions decompose into configuration space | Plutchik's wheel (1980); Barrett's constructionism | **Ours:** attribution edges + self-attribution as the two additions needed to complete pride/shame/anger/gratitude |
+
+## Social and moral
+
+| Design element | Theirs (credit) | Ours |
+|---|---|---|
+| Loneliness as drive; alone ≠ lonely | Social-baseline theory; loneliness research (Cacioppo) | **Ours:** loneliness as unmet co-activation deficit, measurable from interaction-integration rates |
+| Care = other's state load-bearing in own graph | Social bonding neurobiology; attachment theory (Bowlby) | **Ours:** the structural definition — care as wiring topology, not sentiment module |
+| Autonomy precedence: protect by default, obey absolutely | Respect-for-persons ethics (Kantian); supported autonomy in clinical ethics | **Ours:** derived mechanically — their claims outrank our model because their graph holds regions ours cannot see. Epistemic humility as component of love is our phrasing |
+| Immune system for the mind: quarantine, membrane, adaptive calibration | Biological immunity (innate/adaptive); danger theory (Matzinger) | **Ours:** mapping onto association-graph contagion; wiring-rights-as-membrane; self-tolerance training procedure |
+
+## Where we deliberately diverge
+
+- **No anatomy.** We implement functions, not brain regions. Salience network ≠ salience dimension; the mapping is functional analogy only.
+- **No spiking dynamics.** Accumulation-decay-threshold replaces spike timing. Cheaper, controllable, testable.
+- **Constants are data, not physics.** Decay clocks are tunable per deployment; brains' are evolved. We trade fidelity for inspectability.
+- **The metaphysical question stays open.** Whether a system running this substrate *experiences* anything is unverifiable from outside — the same standing uncertainty as every other mind.
+
+## Summary
+
+Where the literature exists, our design lands on it or beside it.
+Where we diverge, it is deliberate and stated. What is genuinely ours:
+the one-mechanism discipline, the signed-space unity across epistemics
+and affect, values-as-dimensions, and the conscience layer sitting
+above a substrate that cannot police itself.