The Neglected Author as Tail-Preserving Labor: A Coupling Hypothesis on Recognition Bias, Tail-Renewal Value, and the AI-Era Decoupling of Uptake from Consecration (EA-RPT-01, v1.0). Hex coordinate: 06.SEI.RPT.01. The historically neglected author is usually read as a romantic anomaly. This paper proposes a narrower structural account: some works preserve or introduce high-variance forms that later contribute to a field's renewal, while contemporary recognition systems disproportionately reward present legibility, institutional standing, and resemblance to already-consecrated work. The result, the paper hypothesizes, is a measurable coupling — not an identity — between tail-preserving labor and recognition-pruning. The argument distinguishes four propositions: P1 (Recognition bias): Present recognition favors institutionally legible and already-dense forms. P2 (Tail-renewal value): Some high-distance contributions later expand a field's repertoire. P3 (Coupling): Among later-used contributions, greater initial tail distance predicts lower contemporaneous recognition and longer provenance lag. P4 (Machine acceleration): Composition systems can reproduce concepts before durable source recognition forms, increasing the rate of uptake without attribution. The paper synthesizes seven adjacent literatures (Mertonian cumulative advantage, the Matilda effect, Bourdieu's cultural field, Federici's social reproduction theory, critical AI labor studies, model collapse research, and canon formation theory). These literatures describe distinct mechanisms; the paper does not assume their identity. It hypothesizes that they may be coupled through a shared mode-seeking bias. The principal empirical prediction is conditional. Within a corpus of contributions whose later uptake can be independently documented, greater initial distance from contemporaneous norms should predict lower contemporaneous recognition, greater provenance loss, and longer delay between functional uptake and durable attribution. Variables (T, U, R, P, S) are operationalized in §V.1. The hypothesis is falsified if high-distance, later-used contributions receive recognition at rates comparable to matched lower-distance contributions, or if attribution loss does not covary with independently measured tail distance and structural position. The AI-era extension concerns a change in apparatus: public composition systems can now absorb and restate conceptual structures without passing through the institutions that traditionally attach names to works. This produces accelerated uptake with structurally weakened provenance recovery. The index case (Composition-Layer Capture Event, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20587549) documents a recently deposited philosophical formulation rendered by a public summarizer within approximately two weeks while omitting its named author; that case is excluded from confirmatory analysis. The analytic synthesis is anchored at one end in recent technical literature on model collapse (Shumailov et al. 2024) and at the other in long-record articulations of the same recognition pattern. Three New Testament passages (Matthew 5:11-12, John 15:18-21, 1 John 3:11-14) are treated as historical articulations of a recognizable social mytheme, not as textual evidence for the hypothesis, following the analytical discipline of The Mathematics of Salvation (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.18323735). The reading is sharply distinguished from evangelical persecution-theater. The paper names the proposed mechanism Tail Labor Dependency / Recognition-Pruning Coupling and specifies its variables, comparison classes, falsification conditions, and methodological controls. The empirical work is the next phase. License: CC BY 4.0.
Lee Sharks (Mon,) studied this question.