Content Metadata

How to read adoption (A) and epistemic tier (T) tags — and how to use Page tools

MARKO ŽIVKOVIĆ In review

Some passages on this site carry bracket tags — short codes in square brackets that say how firmly I stand behind the prose and, separately, how strongly a claim is supported. Two letters, two jobs; do not mix them.

Code	Name	Question it answers
A	Adoption	Have I adopted this as my published stance?
T	Epistemic tier	How strongly is this claim supported?

You will see them inline, for example [A3 — open mapping] or [T12]. Each tag links back here (or should).

Full tier ladder: The Epistemic Ladder.

Where	How to open
Phone or tablet	Tap Page tools (Tiers · Release) above the body text. The panel expands inline — it does not float over the prose.
Large screen	The same control sits in the right margin beside the reading column and stays visible while you scroll (sticky).

Page default — when shown, the entry’s overall default tier from frontmatter (not every paragraph has its own marker).
Tiers assigned by AI — this feature is experimental. On many pages, tier regions were assigned automatically and may contain errors; for now they mainly illustrate how tier highlighting would work, not certify every passage.
What do tiers mean? — links here and to the full ladder.

If a page has no tier regions, the toggle may have little visible effect. Bracket tags like [T12] in prose work independently of the toggle — they always link here.

Publication (inside Page tools)

Shows when this page entered the public corpus, which release batch it belongs to, and this page’s version number. Committed pages are frozen; if something needs correction, a new version is published and the old one remains readable from Release history.

The publish date also appears in the header byline (next to the site name), directly under the subtitle or title — so you do not need to open Page tools to see when the page was released.

Adoption (A)

Adoption is metadata about my content — whether a passage is settled site doctrine, a working draft, or exploratory material I have not adopted.

Level	Inline tag	Meaning
A1	`[A1]` or `[A1 — …]`	Adopted — explicit stance; treat as what I stand behind in published work
A2	`[A2]` or `[A2 — …]`	Working — best current account; reasoned but may change
A3	`[A3]` or `[A3 — …]`	Exploratory — sketch, open mapping, or deliberate non-commitment

The words after the em dash (open mapping, open question, stance not adopted, …) are a short label for that passage — optional, but helps scanning.

Example: A3 — open mapping on the knowledge synthesis term means the L0≈data / L1≈information rhyme is intentional but not yet adopted doctrine — it will be developed in the Synthesizing Knowledge series.

Corpus stance (prose, not brackets)

Many term pages end with a Corpus stance line instead of bracket tags:

Prose	Typical adoption
Adopt	A1 — I stand behind this framing
Context	A2/A3 — cited for vocabulary; not full endorsement of the source programme
Partial	A2 — I adopt part of what the source argues

External works

Works use frontmatter corpusStance — how this site relates to their work (adopt, partial, context, reject-position). That is parallel to A, but scoped to attribution, not my own passages.

Epistemic tier (T)

T is reserved for the epistemic ladder only — tiers 0–13. It classifies how strongly something is supported (or what kind of record it is at the bottom), not whether I have adopted a passage as site doctrine.

Notation	Meaning
`[Tn]`	Sits at tier n on the ladder
tier 1, Tier 12	Same — in prose

The ladder has two layers: substrate (what was captured) and claims (what we infer or assert above it).

Substrate — tiers 0 and 1

Tier	Name	Bracket tag on content?
T0	The Real — what is the case, whether or not anyone records it	Never. No system contains tier zero; there will be no `[T0]` on this site. Tier zero is the floor the ladder reaches for — named here so T1 is not mistaken for the bottom.
T1	Captured evidence — data, observation, measurement, and other records in the log (commit, assert, measure, formalise)	Yes. Use `[T1]` when labelling a capture as substrate: this instrument reported these values at these times, this event is on the permanent log. Tier one is fallible capture, not tier-zero truth — we argue about interpretation, not usually about whether the log line exists.

Everything from tier 2 upward is a claim about the Real or about tier-one captures — ranked by support.

Claims — tiers 2–13

These are the rungs you will most often see on assertions and interpretations (full table in The Epistemic Ladder):

Tier	Name	When it appears
T2	Logically necessary given evidence	Deduction from tier-one captures
T3	Empirically established	Replicated consensus science
T6	Model-based	Formal model output within its assumptions
T7	Hypothesis	Testable, not yet established
T11	Idea / possibility	An option — neither probability nor desirability asserted
T12	Open question	Explicit acknowledged not-knowing
T13	Refuted	Disproven; kept with refutation

Both codes together

Open threads often need both adoption and tier:

Consciousness remains unresolved under non-reductive physicalism. A3 — stance not adopted T12

A3 — I have not adopted a settled stance on consciousness here.
T12 — the question itself is an open question on the epistemic ladder (not a failure to tag — a first-class level).

L–U shorthand — Lx-U-y notation (atomicity × uncertainty); popover-friendly summary of the classification grid
Every Statement Has a Tier — why tier discipline matters
The Epistemic Ladder — full tier 0–13 definitions
Release history — releases, versions, and immutability
Philosophical stance — first-person metaphysics; separate from A/T tagging

Authoring reference (repo): content-metadata.md