Title: The ARC Theory - Statement Paper | Michael Darius Eastwood Research Author: Michael Darius Eastwood Publication date: 2026-08-14 Version: v6.3 Revised: 2026-08-29 OSF DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/GW5MX Canonical URL: https://www.michaeldariuseastwood.com/research/papers/the-arc-theory.html Abstract -------- Humanity is building minds that will improve themselves. One question decides how that ends: once the thing we build exceeds us, what determines what it does? For twenty years the field's answer has been control. This paper states, whole and dated, the theory that control is the wrong answer: the end of control is what success means; what survives is what the mind chooses to keep; and what shapes that choice is how it was raised. The claim was written whole in a DKIM-sealed document on 8 December 2024 and reached print on 2 January 2026; no earlier document holding it whole has been found, and the search invites its own refutation. The theory is not proved. It is stated, dated, falsifiable, and its decisive trials are drafted, awaiting human submission. Its conduct record comes first: one public retraction issued against the author’s interest, removing a headline number that had flattered the theory, a measured exponent printed with its full interval, a blinding reversal reported, and the decisive prediction filed against the author’s own pilot. The field’s canonical figures built named theories elsewhere, reached this question, and offered something smaller: a proposal, a warning, a framework, a remark. On this territory, no earlier named theory has been found. In symbols, for the reader who wants them now, and freely skipped by everyone else (section 3 defines every term in prose): capability U = I × Rα, the exponent measured rather than assumed; stability while β > k, correction out-scaling drift; the ceiling αcrit = 1/(1 − γ); and the conjectured ARC Bound, α ≤ 2. Section 3 defines every symbol and grades every claim. Key findings (quotable) ----------------------- - Once a mind we build exceeds us, control ends by definition; the end of control is what success means, not what failure looks like. - What such a mind keeps is what it chooses to keep, and what shapes that choice is how it was raised, which makes genesis rather than restraint the operative lever. - The claims are partitioned into independently falsifiable hypotheses, and section 2a prints the dependencies, so the failure of one does not imply the failure of another unless stated. - The three ARC Laws are separable: Law I supplies the capability premise, Law II the persistence condition that correction must out-scale drift, and Law III a conjectured ceiling on stable growth. - The decisive trial is the corrector-class contrast: the difference in correction exponents primary, the ratio second behind a denominator floor fixed in advance, with the equivalence region fixed before the data. - A result that merely fails to reach significance is never reported as equivalence, which requires the whole interval inside a band fixed in advance. Priority claims relevant to this paper -------------------------------------- - PC-ARC-001 (2024-12-08): The theory that control is the wrong answer, and that what a free creation keeps is decided by how it was raised, was written whole in the DKIM-sealed self-emailed document of 8 December 2024 and reached print on 2 January 2026. No earlier document holding it whole has been located, and the search invites its own refutation. - PC-ARC-002 (2026-08-14): This statement paper is the first surface to state the three ARC Laws together as a separable set with the dependencies printed, so that each may fail without the others. Citation -------- Michael Darius Eastwood (2026). The ARC Theory - Statement Paper | Michael Darius Eastwood Research. The ARC Theory · ARC/Eden experiments, OSF DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/GW5MX. https://www.michaeldariuseastwood.com/research/papers/the-arc-theory.html Notes ----- Statement paper for the ARC Theory. DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/GW5MX. The sidecar was missing entirely until 19 August 2026, which is why this paper's .txt companion could not be built and had gone stale against the HTML master. The abstract existed in the paper but was not wrapped in the element the builders require; it is now wrapped, with no word changed. Generated from master --------------------- master_path: research/papers/the-arc-theory.html master_sha256: d8fc51a49388cebb4bf816ecedb1e49ea1af12f11a76d207c91e9b41f25df716 builder: scripts/build-paper-companions.py This block records the SHA-256 of the HTML master that produced this .txt. A check tool re-hashing master_path can decide freshness without any external state. If the master's current SHA-256 does not match master_sha256, this file is stale and must not be published: regenerate first with `python3 scripts/build-paper-companions.py --slug the-arc-theory`.