TheoryTHY-2026-0104v0.1
Energy accounting hierarchy and thermodynamic type safety
Neural energetics builds energy bottom-up (membrane dynamics → ion flux → pump work → ATP → dissipation) and finds that a spike has no fixed energy and that most cortical signaling energy is spent on synaptic integration and state maintenance, not the visible pulse. IPM copies the discipline, not the numbers: energy is typed as E = (gross, baseline, marginal, attributed, thermodynamic minimum), a boundary and baseline rule must be declared, information per Joule is not intelligence per Joule, Landauer's kT ln 2 bounds erasure and is not the price of a μI, and Shannon or variational 'energies' never become physical Joules without an explicit mapping.
Definitions
definitions- E_gross = ∫ P_system dt; E_base = ∫ P_baseline dt; E_marg = E_gross − E_base; E_attrib = E_marg + α·E_shared with a declared α.
- Energy boundary: accelerator / node / rack / data center / infrastructure / lifecycle; E = E(Boundary, BaselineRule, AttributionRule).
- E-grades: D estimated / C device telemetry / B node meter / A infrastructure meter / A+ marginal causal energy.
- Landauer distance D_L = E_actual / E_Landauer — an implementation distance, not an intelligence score.
Assumptions
assumptions- Evolution and engineering optimize a Pareto set (energy, speed, reliability, robustness, adaptability), so minimum energy is not maximum utility.
Claims
claims- Spike ≠ FixedEnergyUnit; Token ≠ FixedEnergyUnit; μI ≠ FixedEnergyUnit; SignalShape ≠ EnergyCost.
- GrossEnergy ≠ MarginalEnergy ≠ AttributedEnergy; EnergyComparison ⇒ SameBoundary.
- InformationPerJoule ≠ IntelligencePerJoule; LandauerBound ≠ ActualComputationCost; 1 μI ≠ kT ln 2.
- ShannonEntropy ≠ ThermodynamicEntropy and VariationalFreeEnergy ≠ PhysicalEnergy without an explicit mapping.
Formalisation
formalization- Three efficiencies η_I/E = I/E, η_μ/E = N_μ^eff / E_marg, η_Q/E = Q / E_marg — never equated.
- Energy of a μI is a realization distribution P(E | μI, architecture, hardware, context, boundary).
Predictions
predictions- Reports that give a single 'Joules per answer' without type and boundary will not be comparable across systems.
Falsification / failure conditions
falsification_conditions- If marginal, attributed and gross energies of the same task turn out to be interchangeable in practice, the typing is unnecessary.
Known limitations
known_limitations- The pilot measured device energy only (E-Grade C); no marginal or attributed energy has been measured.
Evidence
| Source | Relation | Target | Status | ID |
|---|---|---|---|---|
EXP-2026-0106 Experiment D — physical trace alignment (declared) | tests | THY-2026-0104 Energy accounting hierarchy and thermodynamic type safety | ACTIVE | REL-2026-0498 |
Relations
| Source | Relation | Target | Status | ID |
|---|---|---|---|---|
THY-2026-0104 Energy accounting hierarchy and thermodynamic type safety | extends | THY-2026-0103 Cross-level triangulation and measurement grades | ACTIVE | REL-2026-0370 |
RES-2026-0101 Execution and physical line — what one answer costs in turns, semantic work, energy and computational spacetime | develops | THY-2026-0104 Energy accounting hierarchy and thermodynamic type safety | ACTIVE | REL-2026-0361 |
THY-2026-0105 Physical computation cost vector and computational spacetime | extends | THY-2026-0104 Energy accounting hierarchy and thermodynamic type safety | ACTIVE | REL-2026-0371 |
PAP-2026-0104 Paper 04 — From neurons to joules: energy, thermodynamics, and physical lower bounds of intelligent computation | formalizes | THY-2026-0104 Energy accounting hierarchy and thermodynamic type safety | ACTIVE | REL-2026-0404 |
SYS-2026-0101 XA-03 — telemetry and run logger (physical execution evidence layer) | implements | THY-2026-0104 Energy accounting hierarchy and thermodynamic type safety | ACTIVE | REL-2026-0449 |
EXP-2026-0106 Experiment D — physical trace alignment (declared) | tests | THY-2026-0104 Energy accounting hierarchy and thermodynamic type safety | ACTIVE | REL-2026-0498 |
History and provenance
- Canonical URL
- https://evemisslab.com/ai/theory/THY-2026-0104/
- Machine-readable
/ai/theory/THY-2026-0104/index.json- Snapshot
AI-SNAPSHOT-v0.1-fe85b9694a45- Provenance
source- EveMissLab research collection: Intelligence Physical Metrology (真本體論13)
extracted_by- Splice (Claude Code), reading the canonical UTF-8 sources and each package's own reports
extracted_at- 2026-09-11
generator- tools/extract_all.py
claim_boundary- status, evidence level and result type follow the source artifact's own stated claim boundary; nothing is upgraded beyond what the report supports