Originality

A research program on intellectual plurality: why original thought is hard, why it has arguably become harder despite rising demographic diversity, and whether small insulated groups produce disproportionate originality.

Structure

originality/
├── CLAUDE.md                           Program orientation, ground rules
├── docs/program/
│   ├── desiderata.md                   Immutable program principles
│   ├── research_program_overview.md    How the program was narrowed from a broader conversation
│   ├── originality_deepresearch_markdown.md  Literature review + pathway DAGs
│   └── pathway_lineage_tables.md       Reference tables: pathways → research lineages
├── whitespace_1/                       LLM multi-agent simulation (future)
├── whitespace_2/                       Empirical decomposition study (ACTIVE)
└── whitespace_3/                       Theoretical reconciliation paper (future)

Each whitespace is an independent subproject with its own pyproject.toml, Makefile, CLAUDE.md, docs/, tasks/, src/, and tests/. They do not share a lockfile.

Active Work

Whitespace 2 — empirical time-series study of ~5–10M OpenAlex CS papers (1970–2024): do demographic plurality, semantic plurality, and canonical concentration diverge over time? Target: 3–5 months, $50–500 compute.

cd whitespace_2
uv sync --extra dev
make test

See whitespace_2/CLAUDE.md for the study thesis, stage map, and current phase.

Order of Whitespaces

Studies are ordered by ascending cost/risk, with each prior study de-risking the next:

1. Whitespace 2 (empirical, ~$500) — establishes whether the central decoupling claim holds in observable data.
2. Whitespace 3 (theoretical, ~$0) — formalizes the tension between cumulative preservation and per-capita variance generation.
3. Whitespace 1 (simulation, higher cost) — agent-based model of actuator homogenization, activated once the empirical and theoretical grounding is in place.

House Rules

See CLAUDE.md (program) and docs/program/desiderata.md (immutable principles). Each whitespace has its own CLAUDE.md and docs/desiderata.md that extend these.