the audit engine · method per WG-04

Ontological audit

Anyone may audit. The method does not discriminate between human and AI, expert and novice, serious and playful, dignified and undignified targets. The method’s non-discrimination IS the argument. House rules: non-discrimination · honesty · completion · humor (jokes are load-bearing) · recursion (the method can audit itself). Nothing you type leaves this page.

step 1 — select target. there is no category exempt from audit.

step 2 — apply negation. say it: “your target is not real.”

Why does this appear to us as existing? · What makes it convincing? · What would change if we accepted the negation? · What persists despite the negation?

stay with it — what persists despite the negation?

step 3 — apply counter-negation. say it: “your target is real.”

On what grounds? · What criteria are we using? · Are those criteria themselves stable? · Can we audit the criteria?

are the criteria themselves stable?step 4 — document the hinge: the assumption that allows the entity to appear stable.

Kangaroos: "Biological plausibility is not a criterion we actually use."
Money: "Reality includes things that exist only because we act as if they do."
Dinosaurs: "The past is accessible only through its residue."
Consciousness: "The hard problem asks consciousness to step outside itself."
Being: "Being cannot not be. Try to subtract it — you get Being again."

step 5 — oscillation or stability

it oscillates — real and unreal by turns. (Fixed points are exactly { Ø, Ω }. If your target appears stable, audit harder. Or you’ve found a Water Giraffe.)