From Human Behaviour to Social Coordination

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* Article: From Human Behaviour to Social Coordination. Report on a Completed Theoretical and Engineering Research Programme and Its End-User Implementation. By Andrei Lubalin, PhD (Sociology) Independent Researcher. July 2026. (ORCID: 0009-0001-7295-9603)

URL = https://zenodo.org/records/21629935  

Abstract

'This report presents the completed results of a theoretical and engineering research programme concerned with the mechanisms by which a plurality of subjects produces coordinated action and a social environment with corresponding properties. The programme changes the object of inquiry from observed human behaviour to interaction between subjects.

It distinguishes coercive and invitational interaction and derives two fundamental mechanisms of social coordination: 

command → control → coercion and idea → consensus → assistance.


Once operative, a mechanism establishes the causal sequence: 

coordination mechanism → conditions of interaction → behavioural strategies of subjects and their plurality → reproducible collective behaviour → observable social environment.


Empirical analysis of a 721-million-user social graph, later extended to 1.59 billion users, established that global social connectedness already exists as a formed structure. The research therefore identifies the conditions under which subjects can manifest this latent connectedness as a functioning global P2P environment of mutual assistance. The calculable benefit of distributing the potential loss of one among many provides motivation for self-organization. Self-organization consists in formalizing each subject's existing significant relations. Social Organizer combines these relations into a referential social graph beyond every subject's immediate relations and coordinates action through the exchange of two types of informational messages: Need and Participation. All further interaction and action occur directly between subjects outside the utility, making the coordination process fully self-regulating. The Law of Autocatalytic Inevitability distinguishes the critical mass at which joining becomes rationally justified from the reproduction threshold at which expansion becomes self-sustaining. The mechanics were demonstrated in an MVP network that began with one participant, expanded to approximately 300 participants, and was used in real cases. The result is a completed theoretical construction and an end-user coordination tool ready for practical deployment.'

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1. Introduction

Andrei Lubalin:

"Most explanations of social order begin with observed human behaviour. Competition, obedience, distrust, accumulation, cooperation, and mutual assistance are treated as expressions of human nature, and the properties of society are then explained through those expressions. This approach reverses the relevant causal relation. Behaviour observed in an existing social environment is already behaviour selected under the conditions of that environment. It cannot be used as the primary explanation of the conditions under which it was produced.

The research programme reported here therefore changed the object of inquiry. The internal ontology of the subject was placed outside the boundary of the study. The subject was accepted as the elementary unit of the social environment, and the inquiry began with interaction between subjects. The purpose was to determine how the mechanism by which a plurality of subjects coordinates action establishes the conditions of interaction, how those conditions determine rational behavioural strategies, and how recurrent strategies become observable as a social environment with corresponding properties.


The investigation proceeded through the following levels: 

subject → interaction between two subjects → interaction of a plurality of subjects → social coordination → theory of social environments → conditions for activation of latent global social connectedness → Law of Autocatalytic Inevitability → engineering implementation → verifiable consequences.


The levels are not interchangeable. Interaction between two subjects is not yet social coordination. A mechanism of social coordination is not a social environment. A social environment is not an acting entity. An engineering implementation does not prove the theoretical construction from which it is derived.

The practical point of departure was an empirical result obtained from the Facebook social graph. Analysis of approximately 721 million users and 69 billion interpersonal connections found that 99.91 per cent of users belonged to a single connected component and that the average distance between two users was 4.74 connections (Backstrom et al., 2012). A later analysis of 1.59 billion active users estimated an average distance of 3.57 connections (Edunov et al., 2016). These results establish that global horizontal social connectedness already exists as a formed structure. It does not need to be created.


The existence of connecting paths, however, does not make those paths functional for coordinated mutual assistance. The research problem was consequently:

  • What conditions are necessary and sufficient for existing latent global social connectedness to manifest as a functioning global P2P environment of mutual assistance?


The programme answered this question at the ontological, theoretical, formal, and engineering levels. Its engineering result is Social Organizer: an end-user social utility that allows subjects to formalize their existing significant relations into a referential social graph and coordinates the actions of a theoretically unlimited plurality through the exchange of two types of informational messages, Need and Participation. All further interaction and action occur directly between subjects outside the utility. The mechanics were tested in an MVP network that began with one participant, expanded to approximately 300 participants, and was used in real cases. Further use is practical deployment of the completed result.

2. Interaction Between Subjects

2.1 Subject and interaction

A subject is accepted as an autonomous elementary unit capable of action. Its internal constitution is not examined within this research.

Interaction exists when an action of one subject changes the alternatives, expected consequences, or relevant information of another subject. With respect to a proposed action, the addressed subject can accept or refuse it.


2.2 Two fundamental types of interaction

Two fundamental types of interaction are distinguished by the consequence of refusal:

• coercive interaction — refusal entails a consequence imposed or credibly retained as imposable by the initiating subject;

• invitational interaction — the addressed subject can refuse without an imposed consequence.


This distinction concerns a specified action and relation. It does not classify the declared purpose, moral description, legality, or expected benefit of the action. A beneficial proposal remains coercive if refusal carries an imposed consequence. A proposal remains invitational if it can be refused without such a consequence.

Coercive and invitational interaction may coexist in a compound arrangement with respect to different actions. They cannot govern the same action under the same relation at the same time, because refusal cannot both carry and not carry an imposed consequence. The distinction is exhaustive at the level of elementary interaction, but elementary interaction is not yet social coordination. Social coordination begins only when the coordinated actions of a plurality of subjects must be produced.

3. Social Coordination

3.1 Coordination of a plurality

Social coordination is the production of coordinated actions by a plurality of subjects. The algorithm that produces coordinated actions by a plurality of subjects is called a mechanism of social coordination.


The two types of elementary interaction provide the logical basis for deriving two corresponding fundamental mechanisms:

• command → control → coercion;

• idea → consensus → assistance.


This is a logical relation, not a causal sequence. Coercive interaction does not causally produce the first mechanism, and invitational interaction does not causally produce the second. The distinction between the two types of elementary interaction supplies the criterion from which the two mechanisms are derived.

3.2 Command, control, and coercion

A command specifies an action required from other subjects. Control establishes whether the required action and the performed action correspond. Coercion makes refusal or non-correspondence consequential through an imposed consequence.

The three elements form one reproducible mechanism: 

command → control → coercion.


Without command, there is no determinate required action. Without control, correspondence or non-correspondence cannot be established. Without coercion, the requirement cannot be made binding through an imposed consequence.


3.3 Idea, consensus, and assistance

An idea is a proposed common course of action that does not make refusal consequential through an imposed consequence. Consensus is the correspondence of the independent acceptances of the subjects whose participation is required. Assistance is voluntary action that enables realization of the accepted idea.


The three elements form the second reproducible mechanism: 

idea → consensus → assistance.


Without an idea, there is no proposed common course. Without consensus, the independent actions of subjects are not coordinated around that course. Without assistance, the accepted course is not realized through coordinated action.


3.4 Feedback

Feedback is necessary for both mechanisms. Control is impossible without information about correspondence between command and performance. Consensus is impossible without information about the independent acceptance of the relevant subjects. Feedback is therefore not a third mechanism and does not belong exclusively to invitational coordination.

Digital technologies did not create communication, feedback, or invitational interaction. They changed the scale and architecture of feedback. For the first time, global distributed coordination through recorded interpersonal relations became technically possible without requiring a single centre to gather information and allocate action.


4. Theory of Social Environments

4.1 The causal sequence

Once a mechanism of social coordination operates, it establishes recurrent conditions under which subjects interact. Subjects select behavioural strategies in relation to the alternatives and expected consequences available under those conditions. When the conditions recur, compatible strategies recur across a plurality. Their recurrence becomes observable as collective behaviour with stable properties.


The complete causal sequence is: 

mechanism of social coordination → conditions of interaction between subjects → behavioural strategies of subjects and their plurality → reproducible collective behaviour → observable social environment with corresponding properties.


No element of this sequence may replace another. The mechanism is not the environment. The conditions are not individual behaviour. Individual behaviour is not collective behaviour. A single collective outcome is not yet a social environment. A social environment is the stable, observable configuration of relations among subjects and corresponding properties that results from reproducible collective behaviour under recurrent conditions of interaction.

The environment does not command, invite, accept, refuse, intend, or act. These capacities belong to subjects. Once observable environmental properties recur, they become part of the conditions encountered in subsequent interactions, but this feedback does not reverse the originating causal direction.


4.2 Coercive social environment

The mechanism command → control → coercion establishes conditions in which access to at least some alternatives or resources depends on correspondence with a required course of action. Under these conditions, compliance may be rational without agreement. Concealment, strategic conformity, competition for control, and attempts to avoid or transfer imposed consequences may also become rational strategies.

Reproduction of the mechanism creates recurrent asymmetry in the capacity to specify required action, determine correspondence, and impose consequences. Hierarchy is therefore not evidence of an antecedent human preference for hierarchy. It is a recurrent property of a social environment reproduced by collective behaviour under coercive coordination. A coercive social environment is consequently characterized by consequential refusal, asymmetric determination of action, dependence on controlled access, and rational adaptation to the possibility of imposed loss.


4.3 Invitational social environment

The mechanism idea → consensus → assistance establishes conditions in which participation depends on acceptance and refusal does not entail an imposed consequence. Initiative can remain distributed because any subject may propose an idea, the relevant subjects accept independently, and assistance remains voluntary.

Under these conditions, participation and assistance can be rational where subjects recognize an individual benefit in realization of the common course. No moral transformation, universal altruism, or central enforcement is required.

An invitational social environment is consequently characterized by non-consequential refusal, coordination through consensus, distributed initiative, and assistance arising from accepted common action.

The two environments are pure theoretical types. Observed societies can contain relations produced by both mechanisms. Classification therefore proceeds with respect to the particular action and relation being examined.


5. Activation of Latent Global Social Connectedness

5.1 Existing connectedness

The Facebook graph established the empirical premise that almost the entire observed population already belonged to one connected social structure. The term latent describes the functional status of this connectedness, not its existence. The relations are real, but their capacity to coordinate mutual assistance beyond the immediate relations of each subject is not generally manifested.

The task is therefore not to construct, replace, or reorganize global social connectedness. It is to establish the conditions under which subjects can activate it through their own existing significant relations. Activation of the connectedness and its manifestation as a functioning global P2P environment are one process.

Global communication and available computational capacity are antecedent technical premises. They make global distributed feedback possible, but they do not by themselves activate the connectedness.


5.2 Self-organization

The substantive motivation for participation is a calculable benefit: the possibility of distributing the potential loss of one subject among many through reciprocal readiness for assistance.

At the level of a subject, the benefit is calculable by comparison with an available alternative.

Participation is rationally justified when: 

net(participation) > net(alternative).


The current scale of the referential social graph is one determinant of this comparison because it determines the potential coverage available to a new participant.

The calculable benefit is not a consequence created by the coordination mechanism. It is the purpose of participation and the motivation for self-organization.

Self-organization consists in the formalization by a plurality of subjects of each subject's existing significant relations. Each subject acts only within a bounded local field of people already meaningful to that subject. The aggregate of these formalized relations constitutes a referential social graph that extends beyond the immediate relations of every participant.


The functional construction is therefore: 

calculable benefit as motivation → self-organization through formalization of existing significant relations → referential social graph.


When the conditions stated in Section 5.3 and the thresholds formalized in Section 6 hold, formation of the referential social graph is simultaneously the activation of latent global social connectedness and its manifestation as a functioning P2P environment of mutual assistance. These are not separate stages.

Self-organization can theoretically include an unlimited number of participants because no subject is required to establish or manage relations with the entire plurality. Each formalizes only a bounded local set. The global character of the resulting environment follows from the already established global connectedness of the underlying social fabric, not from the creation of a new global structure by an engineering tool.


5.3 Conditions of activation

Within the model, four conditions define activation. Their relation to self-sustaining expansion is formalized in Section 6.

First, participation must offer a calculable net benefit relative to an available alternative at the current scale of the referential social graph. This is the rational motivation for entry.

Second, existing significant relations must be formalized through invitation and independent bilateral acceptance. Entry therefore occurs through a relation that already has social meaning for both subjects, not through anonymous aggregation.

Third, referential inheritance must be preserved. The path through which each subject enters remains accessible, allowing the source of a coordination request beyond immediate relations to be identified through the referential chain.

Fourth, the local referential field must remain bounded. Global reach cannot require global cognitive or coordination capacity from any subject. Each participant acts through a sustainable local number of significant relations, while the combined graph extends beyond every local field.


These conditions define the motivation and structure of activation. Within the model, they are necessary for activation and, together with an effective reproduction number above unity, sufficient for activation to become self-sustaining. The first condition is expressed by the critical mass N*, while the reproduction threshold is expressed by m(N) > 1.

6. Law of Autocatalytic Inevitability

When a subject formalizes significant relations, the same possibility becomes available through those relations to further subjects. Each activated part of the referential graph can therefore produce subsequent activation. The process is autocatalytic because its result reproduces the conditions of its continuation.

Let N denote the current number of participants, k the average number of significant referential relations formalized by a participating subject, and q(N) the share of those relations that reach distinct subjects not already active after overlap, clustering, reciprocal connections, and saturation are taken into account.


The effective number of newly exposed subjects is: 

k_eff(N) = kq(N).


Let p(N) denote the share of those newly exposed subjects who enter the same process. The effective reproduction number is: 

m(N) = k_eff(N)p(N).


When: 

m(N) > 1,

each activation produces, on average, more than one subsequent activation. In an ideal non-overlapping case q(N) = 1 and the expression reduces to m = kp. In an actual social graph, q(N) makes the downward effects of overlap and saturation explicit.

The threshold above unity is the classical supercriticality condition of a branching process. The mathematical threshold is not the original discovery. The original result is the identification of a social process in which self-organization through bounded existing relations makes that threshold applicable to the manifestation of latent global social connectedness.

Critical mass.

N* is the minimum number of participants in the referential social graph at which joining it becomes rationally justified for each new participant because of the calculable potential coverage provided by the existing plurality.

A new participant does not acquire direct significant relations with all N existing participants. The participant enters a referential social graph whose existing scale provides potential coverage of N participants, subject to actual propagation and the independent decisions expressed through Participation.

Critical mass and the reproduction threshold answer different questions. N ≥ N* establishes the rational meaning of entry at the current scale. m(N) > 1 establishes that each activation reproduces expansion. Before N*, growth may occur, but rational motivation is not yet reproduced by the scale of the graph. At and above N*, each new participant both receives the potential coverage of the existing graph and increases that coverage for subsequent participants.


Law of Autocatalytic Inevitability.

If subjects can obtain a calculable benefit from distributing the potential loss of one among many, formalize their existing significant relations through an invitational mechanism, preserve referential inheritance, and act through bounded local fields, then, once N ≥ N* and m(N) > 1 hold, their self-organization becomes self-sustaining and manifests the existing latent global connectedness as a functioning P2P environment of mutual assistance.

The term inevitability is conditional. It does not mean that every invited subject participates, that every Need is satisfied, or that growth is uniform. It means that under the stated conditions the process reproduces both the rational motivation for entry and more than one subsequent activation per activation, so continuation no longer depends on proportional growth of a centre or of the number of relations maintained by each subject.


In an ideal non-overlapping referential tree, the maximum number of subjects reachable at exact referential distance l is: 

N_max(l) = k^l.


This expression describes potential reach, not actual participation. Real social graphs contain overlapping relations, clustering, reciprocal connections, heterogeneous local degrees, and saturation. These factors change the realized rate and extent of the process through q(N). They do not change its defining property: a bounded local act can acquire global reach through repetition across an already connected social fabric.


7. Engineering Implementation: Social Organizer

7.1 Function

Social Organizer is a social utility and coordination tool that technically implements the algorithm required for invitational self-organization. It is not a social environment, a new social structure, a governing centre, or a substitute for interaction between subjects.


The utility performs three functions:

• it allows subjects to formalize their existing significant relations through invitation and independent bilateral acceptance;

• it combines those relations into a referential social graph extending beyond each subject's immediate relations;

• it transmits the minimum information required to coordinate the actions of a plurality.


Social Organizer does not create the underlying connectedness. It combines formalized significant relations into a referential social graph and implements the coordination operations required by the activation conditions. When those conditions and thresholds hold, formation of the graph is the manifestation of that connectedness as functional for coordination.

7.2 Two types of informational messages

Social Organizer uses only two types of informational messages:

• Need — a subject communicates the amount required and whether the Need is urgent or recurring;

• Participation — another subject communicates readiness to participate in relation to that Need.


Through the referential chain, participants can identify the subject who issued the Need. They obtain any further information directly from that subject and decide independently whether and how to act. All subsequent communication, verification, agreement, and action occur between subjects outside Social Organizer.

The utility does not determine whether a Need is valid, select who must respond, assign an executor, create an irrevocable obligation, enforce performance, perform calculations, transfer resources, or retain resources. Coordination is carried out through the exchange of the minimum informational messages required to initiate direct interaction between subjects.

7.3 User scenarios and operational limits

For this section, direct operational harm means a reduction in a subject's resources or available alternatives produced by an operation executed within Social Organizer without a further independent decision or action by that subject. The permitted user scenarios define the utility's operative scope.

A participant can formalize a relation, issue a Need, indicate Participation, receive a notification, and confirm completed action. None of these operations transfers or retains resources, creates or imposes an obligation, assigns an executor, compels Participation, or performs a real-world action.

If H_u(a,v) denotes direct operational harm caused by a permitted operation a to subject v, then: 

H_u(a,v) = 0

for every permitted operation within Social Organizer. The statement does not extend to independent decisions or actions taken by subjects outside the utility.


A Need may contain information that does not correspond to the issuer's actual circumstances. Social Organizer does not verify that information. However, issuing a Need does not transfer resources, create an obligation, assign an executor, or compel Participation. The referential chain identifies the issuer, while verification, agreement, and any subsequent action occur directly between subjects outside the utility. A false Need may influence a subject's independent judgment, but any resulting loss would follow from an independent action outside Social Organizer, not from an operation executed by the utility. A fictitious account cannot formalize a significant relation unilaterally because entry requires independent bilateral acceptance. If another subject accepts such a relation, the account enters only through that subject's identifiable referential path. Its permitted operations remain informational and do not acquire the capacity to transfer resources, impose obligations, or execute action.

All further communication, verification of circumstances, agreement, transfers of resources, and real-world action occur outside the utility and remain independent decisions and actions of the subjects involved.

The coordination process is fully self-regulating. It is regulated by the subjects themselves through the exchange of Need and Participation informational messages and through their independent interaction and activity outside Social Organizer. The utility does not manage the process.

Because the process consists of a plurality of direct interactions and actions by subjects, it has no single centre, governing subject, or centralized organizational form. Its individual manifestations can be observed, but there is no single organizational object that carries the process as a whole and can therefore be captured, prohibited, or destroyed as its centre. Disabling a particular technical means may impede the exchange of informational messages, but it does not eliminate the existing significant relations or the subjects' capacity to continue direct interaction and self-organization.


7.4 Confirmation and fulfilled Participation

When the relevant subjects complete an agreed action, completion can be confirmed. Confirmed completed action is preserved in the archive of fulfilled Participation.

The archive records fulfilled action. It does not create a negative record, impose a sanction, restrict access, or transfer authority over future decisions. Each subsequent decision remains an independent decision of the relevant subject.

7.5 MVP: purpose and result

Before the public release of Social Organizer through Google Play and the Apple App Store, an MVP was implemented in real conditions. Its purpose was to develop and test the mechanics of forming a referential social graph, distributing notifications, and coordinating participant activity in real cases.

The network began with one participant and expanded through existing significant relations to approximately 300 participants. It was used for actual Needs, actual Participation, and corresponding actions undertaken by subjects outside the utility.


The resulting network continues to exist.

• The MVP demonstrated that subjects can formalize existing significant relations into a functioning referential social graph;

• notifications and the exchange of Need and Participation informational messages operate in real conditions;

• these messages are sufficient to initiate real coordination while verification, agreement, and action remain outside the utility;

• the resulting coordination can operate as a self-regulating process in an actual community.


The MVP fulfilled its stated purpose. It was not intended to test the Law of Autocatalytic Inevitability or to determine N*. The law becomes practically relevant when participation is rationally justified at the current scale of the referential social graph and the effective reproduction number remains above unity.

8. Verifiable Consequences

The engineering implementation does not prove the preceding theoretical construction. It makes the parameters and consequences below observable during practical deployment.

8.1 Observable parameters

Deployment can measure N(t), the number of active participants over time; k, the average bounded local number of formalized significant relations; q(N), the effective non-overlap share; p(N), the activation share; m(N) = kq(N)p(N), the effective reproduction number; retention; the distribution of referential distances; and the net individual benefit of participation relative to available alternatives.

Critical mass N* is not assigned in advance. It is estimated as the smallest observed scale at which joining becomes rationally justified for new participants because the calculable potential coverage of the existing graph produces a greater net benefit than the available alternative.

8.2 Expected consequences and conditions of disconfirmation

Social environments.

Comparable settings in which different mechanisms of social coordination recur should exhibit systematically different conditions of interaction, rational strategies, collective behaviour, and observable environmental properties. Persistent absence of the predicted relation under controlled or comparative observation would count against the causal account.


Bounded local action and expanding reach.

The average local field k should remain bounded while referential reach and potential coverage extend beyond each participant's immediate relations. If global reach requires k to grow with N or requires proportional growth of central coordinating capacity, the scalability claim is not supported.


Self-sustaining activation.

At and above N*, deployment should determine whether m(N) > 1 can be maintained without proportional central direction. If both measured thresholds hold over a sustained observation window but continuation still requires proportional expansion of a centre, application of the law is not supported. Once m(N) > 1 is observed, the implication that each activation produces more than one subsequent activation on average is arithmetic, not a separate behavioural assumption.


Engineering implementation.

Informational messages should follow identifiable referential paths, while verification, agreement, and action remain outside Social Organizer. If the utility itself allocates action, transfers or retains resources, imposes obligations, or requires a governing subject to approve coordination, it no longer instantiates the model described in this report.


9. Practical Deployment

The research programme concluded in an end-user product. The immediate task is therefore not another preparatory research stage but deployment in existing small communities.

A small community already contains significant relations, shared context, and recurrent Needs. It provides the natural starting environment for formalizing those relations and demonstrating the calculable benefit of distributing the potential loss of one among many. As participants formalize further significant relations, the referential graph extends beyond the initial community without requiring central expansion or an increase in the number of relations maintained by each subject.

Deployment does not create a separate process after self-organization. It begins self-organization in actual communities. Initial deployment should measure the parameters specified in Section 8 and estimate N* empirically. These measurements test the operation and stated consequences of the completed result; they do not allow the engineering implementation to prove the preceding theory by reverse inference.


10. Discussion

The central theoretical result is the restoration of the correct explanatory direction. Recurrent collective behaviour is not explained by attributing the properties of an existing social environment to human nature. A mechanism of social coordination establishes conditions of interaction; subjects select rational strategies under those conditions; recurrent strategies produce reproducible collective behaviour; and that behaviour reproduces an observable social environment with corresponding properties.

The distinction between logical and causal relations is essential. The two elementary types of interaction logically ground the two mechanisms of social coordination. Only the operative mechanism begins the causal sequence leading to the social environment.

Existing work on mutual aid, commons governance, and peer production describes voluntary cooperation, self-governance, and commons-based production across biological, institutional, and technological contexts (Kropotkin, 1902; Ostrom, 1990; Bauwens et al., 2019). The present report addresses a different level of explanation: the causal sequence by which a mechanism of social coordination produces a corresponding social environment and the conditions under which existing latent global connectedness becomes functional for P2P mutual assistance. These works provide context for the research problem; the deductions in this report are not derived from them.

The practical result follows from the empirical existence of latent global social connectedness. Since the global social fabric already exists, transformation does not require construction of a new global organization. It requires conditions under which subjects can formalize their own significant relations and use the combined referential graph for invitational coordination.

The calculable benefit of distributing the potential loss of one among many supplies the motivation. Self-organization is the formalization of the relations through which that benefit can be realized. Social Organizer combines these relations into a referential social graph and enables the exchange of Need and Participation informational messages. All further information gathering, judgment, agreement, and action remain with the subjects.

The Law of Autocatalytic Inevitability describes the resulting dynamic through two distinct thresholds. N ≥ N* marks the scale at which joining becomes rationally justified by calculable potential coverage. m(N) > 1 marks the point at which each activation produces, on average, more than one further activation. When both thresholds hold under the stated structural conditions, self-organization becomes self-sustaining. Global reach follows from repetition across the already connected social fabric, not from unbounded growth of any participant's local field or from direction by a central authority.


11. Conclusion

This research began by replacing observed human behaviour with interaction and social coordination as the object of inquiry.

At the level of two subjects, it distinguished coercive and invitational interaction according to the consequence of refusal.


At the level of a plurality, it derived two fundamental mechanisms of social coordination: 

command → control → coercion

and 

idea → consensus → assistance.


The operative mechanism establishes the complete causal sequence: 

mechanism of social coordination → conditions of interaction between subjects → behavioural strategies of subjects and their plurality → reproducible collective behaviour → observable social environment with corresponding properties.


The programme then addressed the empirical fact that global social connectedness already exists in a latent functional state. The calculable benefit of distributing the potential loss of one among many provides motivation for self-organization. Self-organization occurs through the formalization of each subject's existing significant relations. At the engineering level, Social Organizer combines those relations into a referential social graph extending beyond every subject's immediate relations. Under the stated conditions and thresholds, formation of this graph is simultaneously the activation of latent global social connectedness and its manifestation as a functioning P2P environment of mutual assistance. The process is theoretically unlimited in the number of participants because each subject acts only through a bounded local field. Its global character follows from the established global connectedness of the underlying social fabric.

The Law of Autocatalytic Inevitability distinguishes the critical mass N*, at which joining becomes rationally justified by the scale of potential coverage, from the effective reproduction threshold m(N) > 1, at which expansion becomes self-sustaining. Social Organizer implements the required coordination algorithm through the exchange of two types of informational messages, Need and Participation. All further interaction and action occur directly between subjects outside the utility.

The mechanics were demonstrated in an MVP network that began with one participant, expanded to approximately 300 participants, and coordinated real activity in real cases. Practical deployment can now estimate N*, k, q(N), p(N), m(N), retention, referential reach, and calculable benefit without treating the implementation as proof of the theory. The completed result is therefore both theoretical and engineering: a causal explanation of social environments, a law describing activation of latent global connectedness, an explicit set of verifiable consequences, and an end-user coordination tool ready for deployment in existing communities."

References

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Bauwens, M., Kostakis, V., & Pazaitis, A. (2019). Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto. University of Westminster Press. https://doi.org/10.16997/book33

Edunov, S., Diuk, C., Filiz, I. O., Bhagat, S., & Burke, M. (2016). Three and a half degrees of separation. Meta Research. https://research.facebook.com/blog/2016/2/three-and-a-half-degrees-of-separation/

Haccou, P., Jagers, P., & Vatutin, V. A. (2005). Branching Processes: Variation, Growth, and Extinction of Populations. Cambridge University Press.

Kropotkin, P. (1902). Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. McClure, Phillips & Co.

Lubalin, A. (2025). Discovery of the Law of Autocatalytic Inevitability: A New Natural Law Governing Network Self-Organization. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15778286

Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511807763

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