Significance Misreadability in Inter-System Conflict: A Constraint on Cross-System Regulation

This technical note extends the inter-system conflict branch of the General Theory of Cognitive Structuring (GTCS) by introducing the concept of significance misreadability. The note argues that inter-system conflict may persist not only because systems disagree, fail to communicate, or possess incompatible admissibility structures, but because they fail to read the continuation-weight that signals, actions, refusals, delays, or demands carry within one another’s regulatory architecture. The note distinguishes information exchange, semantic interpretation, admissible discrepancy formation, and significance readability. It defines significance misreadability as the failure to read what a communicated element weighs within another system’s continuation. Several forms are identified, including under-reading, over-reading, mislocation, flattening, and inversion of significance. The note then shows how significance misreadability contributes to conflict persistence, defensive stabilization, asymmetry, mediation difficulty, and human–AI conflict. It does not replace inter-system conflict geometry, but adds a specific layer explaining why communication and clarification may fail to produce cross-system regulation when continuation-weight remains unread.