Description
How does a society’s decision machinery begin to fail long before most citizens notice the damage? I introduce a dynamic, attribute–driven network model in which every node carries two variables—individual fitness F and institutional coverage C. Coverage is the probability that an agent’s data are ingested by optimisation pipelines (markets, recommender systems, policy feedback loops). A simple feedback rule links the two: as inequality widens, the expected coverage of low-fitness nodes decays faster than that of high-fitness nodes, causing the data stream that powers collective decisions to shrink and skew. The resulting cascade concentrates information, attention, and algorithmic leverage inside an ever-smaller elite core—a phenomenon I call the technology gravity well.
Analytical bounds identify a tipping region beyond which coverage collapses abruptly; below that region, decay is slow enough for corrective intervention. A Monte-Carlo agent-based simulation (1 000 nodes, preferential-attachment baseline) demonstrates three regimes: (i) stable coverage when disparity is modest, (ii) gravity-well implosion once the tipping region is crossed, and (iii) stabilisation when a decentralised functional-model intervention exposes the input–state–output mapping that drives each optimisation pipeline. No wealth transfers or exogenous rewiring are assumed; the intervention acts by restoring visibility, not by redistributing assets.
Because coverage is treated as an endogenous network variable, the model links micro-level attribute dynamics to macro patterns usually discussed under segregation, polarisation, or epistemic drift. Crucially, it predicts that any society running opaque optimisation logic is pulled toward widening disparity and systemic information loss, making the gravity well a general failure mode that spans economic management, climate policy, biosecurity, and other existential-risk domains. Reversing the collapse therefore requires treating the functional model of intelligence itself as a shared public good—transparent, auditable, and open to recursive self-correction.
Keywords/Topics
attributed networks, inequality dynamics, coverage collapse, functional model of intelligence, technology gravity well, agent-based simulation
