The Binary Anchor: Cognition, Symbolic Loops, and Systems Failure

This study presents a "dynamic systems framework" that elucidates how cognitive limitations, stemming from inherent human bodily vulnerability, inevitably drive the acquisition of language (symbols), thereby constructing a macro recursive closed loop stretching from individual cognition to social institutions. As compensation for innate bodily vulnerability (finiteness), humans have hyper-developed their internal simulations (predictive coding) to forecast future environmental states. Consequently, they began to harbor a structural error: a discontinuous surge in cognitive cost during decision-making—namely, a "Hesitation Stack (Cognitive Freeze / Computational Explosion). " This paper positions "symbolization" and the resulting "Mandatory Execution (Forced Physical Action) " as evolutionary and cognitive survival apparatuses designed to evade and terminate this hesitation. Individual agents achieve the Mandatory Execution of irreversible choices at any given moment by compressing and reducing the continuous, multi-dimensional real-world space (Continuous Reality / Raw Qualia) into a binarized common code of "0 or 1, " despite permitting inevitable information loss. However, the immediate gains of execution yielded by symbolization generate a novel structural bug in social communication with others. Discrepancies in empirical contexts implicitly held among individuals—their Measurement Metrics (Internal Rulers) —inevitably generate interpretation errors (discrepancies) in symbolic exchange. To correct these discrepancies and guarantee consensus, systems veer toward establishing meta-metrics and externalizing responsibility (transferring it to the system through labeling and institutionalization). This "self-purposeful reconstruction of internal metrics" serves as the secondary driver that cumulatively stacks cognitive and institutional loads. In systems where the Responsibility Allocation Parameter is heavily skewed toward externalization (r → 0, system dependency), feedback mechanisms for load dissipation fail, and once a critical threshold is breached, irreversible system saturation (burst) and the mass production of "Fossilized Knowledge" (commonly referred to as the Corpse of Knowledge, technical debt, and rigid bureaucracy) occur. This paper formalizes how this chain of events operates recursively from the level of individual neurocognition to macro social institutions, maintaining a fractal isomorphism. This structural framework explains the inevitability of recursive freeze (stacks) faced by contemporary symbol-processing-intensive information infrastructures (such as AI and highly complex social systems), thereby offering a theoretical foundation for sustainable system design. The formulations in this paper (such as the Responsibility Allocation Parameter r and the Measurement Metric mₜ) are not empirical models intended for quantitative regression or forecasting based on real data. Instead, they function as a "formal heuristic device (structural metaphor) " designed to pack complex, cross-disciplinary phenomena within a binarized space and explicitly drive the reader's internal simulation.