The Theory of Sense-Making Worlds: Meaning as a Primary Condition of Sociotechnical Viability

This preprint introduces the Theory of Sense-Making Worlds (TSMW), a structural account of sociotechnical viability centered on the maintenance of worldhood. It argues that formally correct systems can progressively become uninhabitable when distinctions lose relevance, norms lose credibility, action becomes workaround-dependent, and intelligibility decays beneath the surface of procedural success. TSMW treats meaning not as semantic content, subjective interpretation, or moral supplement, but as a structural condition under which action remains orientable, accountable, and continuable. A sociotechnical arrangement qualifies as a world if and only if it sustains a minimal regime of distinguishability, relevance, normativity, actionability, continuation, enactment, intelligibility, and sedimentation. The paper further introduces Sense Invariants as threshold conditions of viability under transformation, and formalizes accumulated world-level degradation through the concept of Sense Debt: the distortion of viability conditions net of remaining compensatory capacity. Sense Debt is intertemporal, displaced, and nonlinear, allowing latent world-decay to accumulate beneath the appearance of formal order until compensatory capacity is exceeded and breakdown occurs discontinuously. More broadly, the paper argues that restoring sociotechnical viability requires intervention at the level of meaning rather than intensified formal control. This is a preprint and has not yet undergone peer review. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19233719