Delay, Drift, and the Correction a Path Permits: A Generative Relational Account of Propagation Through Intermediaries

Two parties that cannot address one another directly may be reached through others, and the practice is old. What passes along such a path is composed afresh at every relay, so what arrives is not what was sent, and the path also takes time, so what arrives is late. This paper treats the two together. A longer path buys an interval and spends fidelity, and both follow from the same relays, so the interval and the departure cannot be varied independently. Two claims are then advanced. Where nothing corrects the departure, a longer path is worse without qualification, which agrees with what is understood of lagged feedback in models of confrontation. Where a correction process operates during the interval, the two effects oppose one another, and the departure surviving at the far end is greatest at an intermediate path length, given here as one divided by twice the product of the correction rate and the latency of a hop. Short paths carry little departure; long paths give correction time to work; the exposed region lies between them. The account then observes that a path carrying an overture carries a threat on the same terms, and that a threat arriving in a departed form is read as evidence of intent, which makes the symmetry worse than a caution. Existing statements that interdependence buys time for negotiation are conceded, and the present account supplies the condition they leave unstated. Nothing here is measured, no empirical claim is made, and the model is offered as a construction whose behaviour is reported.