Memory Constructive Memory

Constructive Simulation & Provenance

Spector implements the Constructive Episodic Simulation Hypothesis (Schacter & Addis, 2007), allowing cognitive agents to recombine elements of past experiences into counterfactual scenarios while maintaining rigorous cryptographic and binary provenance.

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warning: Experimental This pathway is not part of the default memory contract. Constructive simulation is gated behind enableAisme. Traces carry provenance CONSTRUCTED and require explicit opt-in for recall.

1. Flexible Fragment Recombination

Unlike static centroid averaging, constructive simulation samples diverse candidate pairs across the top retrieval pool:

1. Diversity Sampling: Deterministic pseudo-random pairing seeded by query hash ensures reproducible benchmark evaluations.
2. Fragment Decomposition: Extracts entity links, temporal position, affective valence/arousal, and semantic vector embeddings.
3. Alignment-Weighted Synthesis: Vector embeddings are blended proportionally to their narrative alignment with the agent's prior:

$$\mathbf{v}_{\text{sim}} = w_1 \mathbf{v}_1 + w_2 \mathbf{v}_2, \quad w_1 = \frac{\text{align}_1}{\text{align}_1 + \text{align}_2}$$

4. Predictive Error Gate: Evaluated against PredictiveCodingNetwork hierarchical error to discard implausible counterfactual fantasies.

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2. Cryptographic & Binary Provenance (MR-01)

Synthetic memories can lead to confabulation if unlabelled. Spector enforces provenance at the binary kernel layer:

Byte 34 (Consolidation Flags):
┌───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┬───┐
│ 7 │ 6 │ 5 │ 4 │ 3 │ 2 │ 1 │ 0 │
└───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┴───┘
          │
          └── Bit 5: FLAG_SIMULATED (0x20)

• In-Memory: Candidates carry EncodingHeaderFields.FLAG_SIMULATED in consolidationFlags().
• Durable Storage: Stamped into consolidation flags (byte 40 in EncodingHeaderLayout). Any downstream scan instantly identifies simulated records via EncodingHeaderFields.isSimulated(flags).
• Soul Version Tracking: Persisted with soulVersion (bytes 46–47) indicating the exact agent configuration under which the simulation was generated.

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3. High-Alignment Persistence Gate

Synthetic memories are not persisted indiscriminately. ConstructiveMemoryPersistenceRelay enforces that memories must meet an explicit narrative alignment threshold:

$$\text{alignSim} \ge \text{persistenceThreshold} \quad (\text{default: } 0.70)$$

Where alignSim is explicitly preserved in candidate metadata and passed directly to durable ingestion.

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4. Benchmark Transparency

Spector tracks and publishes false-memory rates and gap-filling utility through the Cognitive Fidelity Benchmark Suite (ConstructiveRecallFidelityBenchmark), ensuring counterfactual synthesis enhances reasoning without polluting long-term factual recall.