AI-generated conjecture · below the evidence/publication boundary

Selfish Roman roads

Status: Prior

Status is derived only from the shepherd-authored triage/prediction data above -- community submissions and claims are a separate overlay and can never change it (see the participation panel below).

This is a proposed connection between two domains, generated by a language model. It is not an article and not evidence: it sits below the evidence/publication boundary. A quantitative prediction and a named kill-dataset are attached (when registered) so the claim stays falsifiable rather than merely evocative.

Claim (verbatim)

Selfish Roman roads. Route alignments fit Wardrop user-equilibrium (individually shortest time), not system optimum; imperial upgrades target exactly the congestion externalities. Falsify: least-cost GIS vs surveyed alignments.

Kill-dataset (verbatim)

least-cost GIS vs surveyed alignments.

Provenance

Run: Imported conversation (verbatim harvest) · model: claude-fable-5

Origin: operator conversation with Claude Fable 5 at max effort, conducted 2026-07-03, relayed verbatim by the operator into the shepherd session on 2026-07-04. No ModelRun exists for the original generation (it happened outside the pipeline); this transcript file is the canonical capture. Transcript path: docs/generated/conjecture_harvest_fablemax_20260703.md. Model (operator-attested, not pipeline-recorded): claude-fable-5. Novelty disclaimer (verbatim, load-bearing -- rule 4): "Same caveat as before, doubled: at 100 items across all of archaeology and history, some of these will have cousins in the literature I can't check. What I can guarantee is the format — each links two things not normally linked, and each names the dataset or measurement that would kill it."

Novelty / leakage triage

Adjacent (closely related prior work exists)

Least-cost-path versus surveyed-alignment testing is an active method on exactly this object (via XVII, Sandy Flanders, Roman Britain suitability studies; the empire-wide Itiner-e geometry dataset now published), which covers route-optimality analysis; the game-theoretic discrimination (Wardrop user-equilibrium vs system optimum, imperial upgrades targeting congestion externalities) was not located as applied to Roman roads.

'A GIS-based analysis of via XVII' (Bracara-Asturica LCP study) — LCP vs surveyed alignment
Itiner-e: empire-wide Roman road geometry dataset, Scientific Data — Enabling dataset

Predictions

No prediction registered yet.

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