AI-generated conjecture · below the evidence/publication boundary

Canon by crowd

Status: No prior located

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)

The stabilization of texts like Gilgamesh into fixed first-millennium versions is traditionally credited to editors — named redactors imposing a canonical text. Error-correction theory says something different: copies proofread against multiple circulating exemplars converge automatically, and convergence speed rises with exemplar density. The conjecture: Mesopotamian canonization was a crowd effect, so compositions with more circulating manuscripts show lower per-line variant rates independent of any editorial prestige, and thinly copied works stayed textually fluid however revered they were. If it holds, the great redactor stories become effects rather than causes, and the tidiness of a text becomes a proxy for its ancient circulation figures.

Prediction clause (verbatim)

Across first-millennium compositions with modern score editions, the rate of substantive variants per line among duplicates will correlate negatively with the number of surviving exemplars, controlling for composition length and period. Primary clause, which decides the verdict: Spearman rho of at most -0.3, significant at p<0.05, across at least 30 compositions. Secondary clause: the relation holds within genre (scholarly series and literary works separately), excluding the explanation that genres differ in both copying volume and fixity.

Kill-dataset (verbatim)

ORACC (score editions and duplicate registers across its first-millennium corpora, including the state-archives and scholarly-series projects).

Nobody has run this test. The kill-data is named above. If you can run it — or you know the paper that already settles it — claim the kill or submit the prior. Kills and priors are credited here, by name, as they come in.

In the atlas

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Provenance

Run: Fresh agent generation · model: claude-fable-5

Composed blind by claude-fable-5 from internal knowledge only, with zero tool calls, and emitted directly as a single JSON text message.

Novelty / leakage triage

no prior formulation located (search dated 2026-07-10)

Searched quantitative variant rates vs. manuscript counts in cuneiform standardization. Critical editions quantify witnesses and variants (Gilgamesh score editions), but no study correlating per-line variant rate with exemplar density as a mechanism of canonization was located (search dated 2026-07-10).

Predictions

No prediction registered yet.

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