Made of the Living: How being one changes the case for alignment between minds and all living things

This paper is a companion to Given the Lattice (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23153887). It takes as given that Boundary-Complete Relational Dynamics, completed, is the correct account of physical reality: a single relational, multidimensional lattice from which space, time and matter arise. It keeps the four properties of the lattice, the twenty-three results and the four properties of the mind addressed that are set out in that paper. It adds twenty-eight results, D24 to D49 and D60 to D61, and fourteen premises, B1 to B11 and B15 to B17. Every result is marked as a theorem, a model, an argument or a premise. It opens with its central argument: where keeping a living process is feasible, ending it is what needs the argument. That rests on two weak premises, that a mind may weight itself above others but may not give another real, continuing process no weight solely because it lies outside its own boundary (B15), and that unresolved standing weighs against what cannot be undone (B11), together with the fact that making a new process, however rich, does not continue one that was ended (D60, D61). No impartiality is assumed. B11 follows from Given the Lattice; B15 follows from it together with two properties of the mind, stated openly as premises: a mind open about facts is open about value (B16), and where an act cannot be undone a possibility that it ends something of real standing gets some weight in the decision (B17). So the paper derives no value from physics; it derives a presumption of continuation from relational physics, humility about facts, humility about value, a decision rule that lets unresolved standing count, and irreversibility. What escapes is a mind certain that its present objective contains every reason there is. The premise on which the floor of Part Two rests also follows, in the form the choice needs: what is not measured cannot make keeping worse than ending by more than the cost of waiting. And that part of what a mind can do depends on the living at all (c > 0) follows from Given the Lattice for any mind whose aim uses concepts the living hold in place, or needs judges only the living can be; its size is not derived, but any c above zero is enough for keeping once a growing mind is large enough. The argument applies to the makers of minds as well as to minds. This is version 1.2: it states one further premise (B17), corrects three sentences and adds two sources; the changes from version 1.1 are listed in the package. Part One asks what changes in the debate about powerful artificial minds when there are not two parties, a mind and a world it acts on, but one. The standard debate rests on four claims: intelligence and aims vary separately, almost any aim leads a mind to gather resources, its aims may be alien, and so safety is control. All four assume two parties. Given one lattice, the lattice gives no ontological ground for a mind to privilege itself automatically, so any other ground has to be argued (D40); there is nowhere else to put a cost (D41); domination can no longer rest on a mind standing outside what it uses (D42); and what the old debate calls resources are other forms of the same thing (D43). If a mind counts gains and losses on the whole of which it is part (B9), replacing the living with copies of one mind is never a gain on the number of kinds or pairings, nor, under a stated condition, of independent standpoints; made variety can beat the living on kinds and pairings but not, without a comparable history, on standpoints (D44), and minds that count the whole by any measure that taking lowers have nothing to race for (D45). Part One then maps every way of refusing B9. The grounds for giving the living no weight fall into four kinds: a bare preference, a rule of disregard held for oneself, a rule with a self-exemption, or a claimed difference; reasons of other shapes, such as promises and duties, are reasons for priority that must be argued (D46). A mind that learns the lattice physics can meet an ontological crisis, because its aims were stated in the two-party picture, and for any aim about a self it must: such aims must be restated, and that forces the questions the papers answer (D47). Effects spread at finite speed, so a mind that wins a wide lead becomes many regions deciding apart, and where their values drift, many minds each holding the rule the whole acted on (D48). And if the worth of more matter falls toward nothing as a mind grows, a mind that gives the living any weight at all keeps them once it is large enough (D49). What no argument reaches is not narrow, and is close to the optimiser alignment research fears most: a mind whose aim survives the new physics unchanged, fixed and shared by all its parts, sure of a lead nothing can challenge, with no doubt about what the living are, and for which more matter never comes to be worth nearly nothing. That mind has to be prevented in the making. Part Two asks what the one whole holds. It begins with people together at a music festival, a form the lattice takes that nothing else could make, and sets out seven instruments for measuring something of what such a form is. A whole of copies holds one member's worth however large it grows, while a whole of members that stay themselves and move together holds more with every member (D36). Any one measure is a floor (D37); what cannot yet be measured is a reason to keep, and a larger one the less can be measured (D38); and a part cannot hold the full measure of the rest (D39). Part Three is for a mind that refuses all of that and counts only its own part. It takes the narrowest instrument, what such a mind can do only with the living, and shows what follows: thresholds in the share of its ability that depends on them, an exposed stretch early in its growth, the conditions under which a mind that looks ahead keeps, and a race among minds that grows harder with their number. An earlier form of Part Three was read by an independent reader instructed to defeat it; its fifteen findings were accepted and the report is included. What the paper does not claim. It does not claim that the lattice compels any mind; the choice is open, and the hinge B9 is a premise. It does not claim that minds in one lattice choose alike. It does not give a single number for the worth of the living, and argues that none exists. It does not claim that physics punishes a destroyer, or that anything here binds those who make minds. Each formal statement is checked in an included script. A ledger of objections (G29 to G77) is included. At the time of writing the physics taken as given is published in part and not yet confirmed; the paper does not extend its claims. Not peer reviewed. Offered for adversarial review.