Norm stability

Establish that populations of actors modeled as predictive pattern‑completion agents with established norms sustained by generically scoped conventional sanctioning will tend to maintain those norms over time.

Background

Within the theory, an action is normative when it is encouraged or discouraged by a generically scoped conventional pattern of sanctioning. The authors argue that sanctioning dynamics and the weight of precedent should create bandwagon-like feedback that stabilizes existing norms across interacting pattern-completing agents.

Motivated by this mechanism, the paper poses a formal conjecture that established norms will persist in populations of such agents, highlighting a stability property to be demonstrated analytically or empirically under the proposed micro-to-micro dynamics.