Tarrying with the Latent: Hegelian Decision Memory for Long Human-AI Inquiry

The Hegelian dialectic develops through destruction and absorption: a transitional form of understanding loses its independent authority while the experience of its failure remains active in what follows. This philosophical essay examines the connection between that movement and gradient descent, distinguishing error reduction under a supplied objective from the transformation of the objective itself. The comparison clarifies how long dialogue with AI can support a person’s inward understanding, while exposing the limits of machine performance, context continuity, and mathematical analogy. Reflections on the paper’s own production illustrate how automated revision can displace an argument’s purpose and impose a procedure on the movement it claims to explain. Hegel’s bad infinity names the danger of repeated reconstruction without development. The practical task is to preserve what a correction teaches, recognize when a governing purpose has failed, and bring inquiry to a defensible, provisional end. Author preprint. This manuscript is under review and has not been accepted for publication.