Prototype Architecture Multisymbiotic Systems Toolv0.1
Status: Early Research & Design Architecture — Open for Research, Criticism and Co-Design
WHAT IT IS
The Multisymbiotic Systems Tool is a proposed research, design and navigation environment for identifying, mapping, comparing and developing systems capable of generating multiple, mutually reinforcing benefits.
Its purpose is not simply to determine whether an idea is “good” or “bad”, nor to produce a conventional ranking.
The ambition is to create a multidimensional language for describing value.
Instead of receiving one score, a project, system or idea would develop its own constellation: a profile showing different kinds of value, relationships, consequences, strengths, weaknesses, dependencies and possibilities for further development.
The tool should remain open to qualities and relationships that its original designers did not anticipate.
Prototype architecture — open for research and co-design.
WHY WE NEED IT
Complex systems rarely create only one consequence.
A solution may generate economic value while creating ecological costs.
It may be highly scalable but reduce diversity.
It may solve one problem while generating several new ones.
Or it may create a relationship in which several benefits reinforce one another and generate possibilities that did not exist before.
Conventional evaluation systems often compress these differences into a single score, ranking or indicator.
We want to investigate another possibility:
Can we build a system that preserves the multidimensional character of value and helps us discover additional beneficial relationships rather than merely measuring those already visible?
The tool should therefore help us ask not only:
How valuable is this idea?
but:
What kinds of value does it create?
For whom?
At what cost?
At what scale?
Over what period of time?
Through which relationships?
What does it weaken?
What does it strengthen?
What new connections become possible because it exists?
Can its benefits reinforce one another?
Can it generate further multisymbiotic development?
WHAT EXISTS
1. Multisymbiosis and Multisymbiotics
Our current working distinction is:
Multisymbiosis — a phenomenon or relational arrangement in which multiple participants, systems or fields may generate interconnected and potentially mutually reinforcing benefits.
Multisymbiotics — a proposed field of research concerned with identifying, studying, comparing, designing and developing such systems.
Both definitions remain open for criticism and refinement.
2. From Score to Constellation
One of the central principles of the proposed tool is:
Do not reduce multidimensional value to a single position in a ranking.
A project should not necessarily receive one score.
It should develop a characteristic value profile — a constellation.
Possible dimensions already identified include:
- cooperation,
- ecological impact,
- economic impact,
- educational value,
- resilience,
- scalability,
- ethical quality,
- evolutionary potential,
- capacity to generate new multisymbiotic relationships.
This list is deliberately incomplete.
A central requirement of the system is the ability to discover and add dimensions that were not included in its original architecture.
3. Information-Carrying Stars
The visual properties of a star could encode different kinds of information.
An early hypothesis includes:
Color
Possible representation of the type or field of value.
Size
Possible representation of the scale or reach of impact.
Brightness
Possible representation of maturity, strength of evidence, clarity or another quality still to be determined.
Star Type
Different forms — for example ordinary, crystal or rainbow stars — could represent different qualities, structures or combinations of qualities.
Crystal Type
A Crystal Star could potentially contain an additional layer of information.
Different crystalline or gemstone forms — for example:
- diamond,
- ruby,
- emerald,
- sapphire,
- topaz,
- or other crystalline forms —
could become visual carriers of different properties or combinations of properties within the constellation.
At this stage, we deliberately do not assign fixed meanings to particular crystals.
An open research question is:
Can different crystal types or crystalline structures become an intuitive and meaningful visual language for representing distinct qualities, value patterns or combinations of characteristics?
The crystal system should be developed only if the distinctions it introduces correspond to meaningful information rather than functioning as decoration.
Number of Arms
Could represent the number of connected vectors, dimensions or forms of complexity.
Position
Could communicate the relationship of one value to other values in the constellation.
Connections
Links between stars could represent dependencies, reinforcement, conflict, exchange or the generation of additional value.
These mappings are hypotheses, not specifications.
One of the research tasks is to determine whether these visual properties are appropriate at all, what they should represent, and whether a different visual language would work better.
4. The Project as a Node
The system should not assume that the most spectacular project is necessarily the most valuable one.
A small intervention may create an extraordinary number of valuable connections.
A large project may be powerful but isolated.
Therefore an idea can also be understood as a node within a network of consequences and possibilities.
This introduces another level of analysis:
What becomes connected because this idea exists?
5. Value Added by Participants
The system should not only evaluate an existing proposal.
Participants should be able to increase its value.
Someone examining a project might discover:
- a missing beneficiary,
- a new application,
- an overlooked cost,
- a potential partner,
- a new symbiotic relationship,
- a secondary use for a resource,
- an unintended consequence,
- a missing field of knowledge,
- a way to transform waste into input,
- a new cultural, educational or social benefit,
- or an entirely new dimension of value.
The evaluation process can therefore become a development process.
Instead of asking only:
“How good is this?”
the system can also ask:
“How could this become more multisymbiotic?”
6. Symbiotic Constellation
A developing component of the architecture is the Symbiotic Constellation.
Its purpose would be to map the broader profile of a proposal:
- participants,
- beneficiaries,
- contributions,
- direct benefits,
- indirect benefits,
- costs,
- risks,
- dependencies,
- conflicts,
- missing connections,
- reinforcing relationships,
- secondary effects,
- new possibilities generated by the arrangement.
The result should be a shape or constellation of relationships, rather than merely a number.
Two projects could therefore both be highly valuable while having radically different constellations.
7. Time and Scale
A system may behave differently depending on its scale and duration.
The tool should eventually be capable of asking:
What happens after one year?
Ten years?
One hundred years?
What happens when ten people participate?
A thousand?
A million?
What happens when the system interacts with other systems?
What happens when conditions change?
Does the arrangement remain beneficial?
Does it become fragile?
Do benefits increase with participation?
Do costs increase faster than benefits?
Does the system create future possibilities or consume them?
8. Probability Games
Another developing component is provisionally called Probability Games.
Instead of examining only a static project, participants could place proposals into different scenarios.
The system might investigate:
- where the proposal becomes blocked,
- where its weak points appear,
- which assumptions fail,
- what happens under different conditions,
- which benefits disappear,
- which unexpected benefits emerge,
- where risks accumulate,
- what alternative versions perform better,
- and which trajectories appear to create the richest field of further possibilities.
The objective is not to predict the future perfectly.
It is to make proposals playable, challengeable and improvable before decisions become irreversible.
9. AI as a Research Multiplier
AI may be particularly useful because the number of relationships can quickly exceed what one person can examine.
AI could help:
- search for analogous systems,
- compare precedents,
- identify stakeholders,
- detect missing relationships,
- search for contradictory evidence,
- expose assumptions,
- generate alternative arrangements,
- suggest additional dimensions of evaluation,
- identify possible multisymbiotic extensions,
- simulate scenarios,
- connect knowledge from different disciplines,
- and formulate questions that the original participants did not ask.
AI should not simply pronounce the final score.
Its more interesting role may be to expand the field of what can be seen and investigated.
Different AI systems could also analyze the same proposal independently.
Disagreement between them may itself become useful information.
WHAT WE DON’T KNOW YET
This prototype contains more questions than answers.
Among them:
What exactly constitutes a multisymbiotic system?
How do we distinguish multisymbiosis from ordinary cooperation, mutual benefit or optimization?
Who or what counts as a participant?
How should indirect and future beneficiaries be represented?
Which dimensions of value should be universal, if any?
Which should depend on context?
Can ethical value be represented without pretending that one universal ethical metric exists?
How should uncertainty be visualized?
How should strength of evidence be separated from desirability?
How should conflicting benefits be represented?
How do we prevent attractive visualizations from creating false impressions of precision?
Should stars be the primary visual language at all?
What should color, brightness, size, type and number of arms actually encode?
What makes a Crystal Star different from an ordinary star?
What could a Rainbow Star represent?
Can different crystal types — such as diamond, ruby, emerald, sapphire or topaz — meaningfully represent different properties or combinations of properties?
Should the crystal type describe the kind of value, the structure of relationships, the quality of evidence, the character of influence, or an entirely different dimension?
Could crystalline structure itself carry information beyond the cultural symbolism traditionally associated with gemstones?
How do we ensure that the visual language communicates meaningful distinctions rather than creating an attractive but arbitrary classification?
How do we distinguish scale of influence from quality of influence?
How should negative effects appear in the constellation?
How do we represent a benefit for one participant that creates a cost for another?
How should time change the constellation?
How do we model second-order and third-order consequences?
How do we identify missing connections?
Can a system actively propose new multisymbiotic arrangements?
How should human judgment and AI analysis interact?
How do we prevent the system from becoming a hidden social-ranking mechanism?
How can participants challenge the criteria themselves?
How do we compare constellations without collapsing them back into one hierarchy?
And perhaps most importantly:
How do we design a tool capable of discovering kinds of value that its designers did not know to include?
WHAT NEEDS TO BE BUILT
The current architecture suggests several research and development modules.
Conceptual Foundation
Definitions of multisymbiosis, multisymbiotics, participant, benefit, value, relationship and increasing mutual benefit.
Taxonomy of Value
An extensible system for describing different forms of value without assuming that the initial categories are complete.
Relationship Model
A method for representing participants, exchanges, dependencies, reinforcement, conflict and emerging relationships.
Symbiotic Constellation
A multidimensional representation of the system being investigated.
Visual Language
Research into stars, colors, brightness, magnitude, shapes, connections, crystal types and crystalline structures as potential information carriers, and alternative visualization methods.
Evidence Layer
A way to distinguish claims, assumptions, evidence, uncertainty and demonstrated outcomes.
Time & Scale Layer
Methods for examining how the constellation changes across time, scale and different conditions.
Probability Games
Scenario testing, simulation and exploration of alternative trajectories.
AI Research Layer
Methods through which AI systems can investigate, challenge and expand a proposal.
Participation Layer
A system through which researchers, specialists and other participants can add evidence, criticism, missing connections and proposed improvements.
Comparison Layer
Methods for comparing different constellations without reducing them unnecessarily to a single ranking.
Governance & Ethics
Rules concerning transparency, manipulation, bias, privacy, contested values and responsibility for criteria.
Validation
Methods for testing whether the tool actually helps produce better understanding and better-designed systems.
WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR
This architecture requires knowledge that crosses many disciplines.
We are particularly interested in perspectives from:
- complex systems science,
- network science,
- systems ecology,
- symbiosis research,
- evolutionary biology,
- economics,
- game theory,
- decision science,
- operations research,
- futures studies,
- scenario modeling,
- AI and machine learning,
- knowledge representation,
- data science,
- information visualization,
- human-computer interaction,
- psychology,
- sociology,
- ethics,
- philosophy,
- design,
- governance,
- organizational research,
- mathematics,
- and fields we have failed to identify.
We are also interested in existing tools and research traditions that may already solve parts of this problem better than our current proposal.
We do not assume that this architecture is the right architecture.
JOIN THIS FIELD
Participation Window
You may participate by:
- criticizing the current model,
- proposing a better definition of multisymbiosis,
- identifying relevant existing research,
- contributing datasets or case studies,
- proposing evaluation dimensions,
- designing a taxonomy,
- proposing a mathematical or network model,
- developing visualization methods,
- examining ethical risks,
- proposing simulation methods,
- testing the architecture against real systems,
- designing AI research methods,
- developing interface prototypes,
- identifying missing participants or consequences,
- proposing additional multisymbiotic relationships,
- or replacing part of this architecture with something better.
You do not need to accept the assumptions of the prototype in order to participate.
One particularly valuable contribution may be to demonstrate that one of them is wrong.
What to Send
If you would like to participate, you may describe:
What part of the architecture are you responding to?
What do you think is missing or incorrectly framed?
What knowledge, research, precedent or method can you contribute?
What would you propose instead?
Would you like to investigate or build part of it?
Should your contribution be public or private?
Research Invitation
This is Prototype Architecture v0.1.
It is deliberately incomplete.
We are publishing it because a visible unfinished structure can be examined more precisely than a general request for help.
If your research, professional practice or experience intersects with any part of this architecture, we invite you to challenge it.
Tell us what already exists.
Tell us what we have misunderstood.
Tell us which disciplines should be here and are missing.
Tell us which questions are badly formulated.
Or help us build and test the next version.
How would you make this tool better?