Hand Washing and Bitcoin Share a Skeleton

TalkShingai ThorntonSeptember 24, 2026

Shingai Thornton argues that protocols are formally systems, proving that seven independent systems-theory traditions (Klir, Bunge, Mobus, etc.) share one irreducible structure—a 'walking arrow' or quiver where one thing depends on another. She uses Lean 4 to machine-verify this convergence across three worked examples: handwashing (a contamination-threshold homeostat), TCP/HTTP composition, and Bitcoin's difficulty adjustment (a fixed-point-governed homeostat), proposing this as a candidate 'floor' for a grand unified protocol modeling theory.

Topics

bitcoin-difficulty-adjustment-as-homeostatfixed-point grand-challenge-55-unified-protocol-modeling-theory lean-4-machine-verified-proofs plural-integration-of-system-definitions-klir-bunge-mobus protocols research symposium-2026 technology walking-arrowquiver-as-common-system-structure

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