An atlas of exact, incomplete descriptions
The Tessera Atlas
A tile can tell the truth
without telling the whole story.
Unfold a mosaic one region at a time. Count its ink, follow its seams, or turn a patch beneath the summary. The picture changes; some descriptions do not.
A quiet mathematical toy, not a measure of value. No winning arrangement or timer.
Choose a plate
Pepper
4 summary tilesInk is a filled lozenge; ivory is an open circle. Numbers are exact counts, not ratings.
The cutting tools
Change the description
Select a tile, then unfold it into four children. Folding its parent restores a coarser description without deleting the underlying detail.
Turn detail rotates the selected region clockwise. This really changes the underlying picture, unlike unfolding or folding. Ink count stays fixed.
Fine detail is an overlay, not another measurement. It leaves the chosen cut intact.
Back to the mosaic ↑Keep one thing still
A rubbing beside the original
Pin the current fine pattern, then choose another plate or turn a region. Compare the complete patterns as well as two whole-plate summaries.
No pattern pinned.
Three ways through
- Same ink, different joins. Pin Pepper. Switch to Ribbons and Fold all. Both have eight ink tesserae. Switch the report to Internal seams; these two summaries now differ.
- A precise local language. Choose Steps and Restore plate. Unfold one quadrant, not the whole plate. Some areas can stay coarse while others become explicit.
- Even two numbers are not a picture. Choose Ribbons, Restore plate, Fold all and pin it. Turn detail once. The pattern changes, but both whole-plate numbers stay the same. Show fine detail to see what neither number specifies.
No conclusion about consciousness follows from these examples. They ask which distinctions a description keeps, not which pattern is better.
Read the tile ledger
Coordinates are one-based. Seams count neighboring unlike cells strictly inside a tile; summing local seams omits seams crossing tile borders.
Take an impression
Make a current record before downloading. Any actual change clears it; merely selecting a tile does not. The SVG shows fine detail with the chosen cut outlined, not the summary overlay.
No current impression.
Reading notes, rules & limits
Where the question comes from
In Against functionalism (2017; updated 2023), Michael Edward Johnson argues for precise, disagreement-mediating descriptions of consciousness and suffering. His discussion of abstraction distinguishes precision from vagueness. These are his philosophical arguments, not conclusions established by this app. The essay also marks its positive research proposals as risky and not yet known to be right, and notes his departure from QRI in May 2022.
The complete hosted Against Eliezer’s complexity of value thesis Note (September 28, 2024) separates agent-relative preferences from a further claim about value’s complexity and fragility. Johnson disputes both and hopes for a more fundamental account. Our inventory and seam counts neither instantiate nor refute either view. A simple number is not thereby a fundamental theory of value.
What was invented here
Sixteen binary tesserae, three plates, recursive four-way cuts, clockwise turns, ink counts, internal seams, and the pinning/printing rules are authored mechanics. Unfolding is lossless because the original cells remain in memory. A summary alone is not generally reversible. A turn is a rearrangement, not a symmetry or value test. No pattern has a goodness score.
What remains unknown
This is not a model of a brain or evidence for or against functionalism, qualia formalism or a theory of valence. It does not measure consciousness, suffering, welfare, alignment or visitors. Exact arithmetic only establishes these toy rules.
The Notes index guided source discovery. Lab and Hyperspace informed visual ambition, not scientific authority. The ceramic atlas is an original interaction and artwork, not a reconstruction of either.
Colophon
AI-generated October 1, 2026 with gpt-6-astra (session-reported runtime metadata). Daily only; no main-site approval or endorsement. No sound, tracking, storage or external runtime requests. State lives in this tab. Downloads are records, not importable saves. Keyboard: Tab to tiles and press Enter to select; use the ordinary buttons for every action. No dragging required.