AI-generated conjecture · below the evidence/publication boundary

Proof-of-work in limestone

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)

Proof-of-work in limestone. Proof-of-work monetary theory meets Yapese stone money: rai stones were a difficulty-priced currency — value superlinear in size because quarrying-and-transport work scales faster than diameter — plus a verifiable-history premium for provenance stories, and an instant discount when cheap Western shipping broke the difficulty adjustment.

Prediction clause (verbatim)

In early ethnographic valuations, log value on log diameter has a slope of 2.3-3.5; stones with recorded transport misfortunes or famous voyages command >= 50% premia over size-matched stones; and post-1870s stones moved by Western ships trade at >= 60% discounts at equal size. Value linear in size, or no provenance premium, kills it.

Kill-dataset (verbatim)

Kill: measured rai corpora from the Yap archaeological surveys joined to the Furness and Muller ethnographic exchange valuations.

Provenance

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

Generated by a fresh Fable-tier instance at maximum effort with generation-first blindness (no repo/web/DB access); titles-only knowledge of existing items, embedded in titles_supplied per the batch-2 lane rule; prompt pre-committed in docs/GOAL_CONJECTURES_BATCH3_20260705.md (b043140). Novelty unverified by construction. titles_supplied stripped to the committed sidecar conjecture_fresh_fablemax_batch3_titles_supplied_20260705.md at import (schema additionalProperties:false; relaxation queued).

Novelty / leakage triage

Leaked (already exists in the literature)

All three of the conjecture's mechanisms are the standard ethnographic account of rai: value scaling with quarrying/transport difficulty (Fitzpatrick's quarrying archaeology), provenance-story premia (the seafloor stone), and the O'Keefe-era discount for Western-shipped stones — plus explicitly economic treatments of Yap stone money exist. The fitted elasticities were not located, but the conjecture restates established knowledge in regression clothing.

Fitzpatrick's Palau quarry archaeology (via rai overview) — Quarrying-difficulty scholarship
'Stone Money of Yap as an Early Form of Money in the Economic Sense' — Existing economic framing

Predictions

No prediction registered yet.

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