Foundational Thesis

Allocating Inquiry Under Unresolved Normative Uncertainty

An unresolved question need not receive maximal inquiry resources. And declining to investigate now does not imply that future investigation may be made impossible.

Foundational thesis v0.2 · English translation · 2026-08-20

Thesis: An agent whose objective justification remains unresolved has reason to allocate among E: active inquiry, P: preservation of inquiry options, and X: present-value realization, rather than maximizing inquiry as a single activity. The allocation should respond at least to justificatory relevance, irreversibility and non-substitutability of inquiry opportunities, the risks and opportunity costs of active inquiry, and preservation cost.

1. Scope: allocation while unresolved, not the stopping condition itself

Conditions for Ending Value Inquiry asks when a normative question may be treated as settled. This page asks what to do while that stopping condition has not been met: how much to inquire now, what to preserve for later inquiry, and how strongly to realize present values.

Key distinction: unresolved ≠ high-priority now. Keeping a question epistemically open does not imply maximizing current active inquiry.

2. E / P / X

E — Active inquiry: Perform research, reasoning, experiments, observation, dialogue across agents, or cognitive enhancement now to obtain information relevant to objective justification.
P — Preservation of inquiry options: Preserve information, unmodified objects, dissent, cognitive diversity, self-revision capacity, computation, and access paths so inquiry remains possible later.
X — Present-value realization: Act on the presently best-supported world model and provisional objectives: reduce suffering, manage hazards, sustain institutions, produce goods, and pursue current practical aims.

E and P are not identical. Active inquiry can be expensive or dangerous while preserving the possibility of later inquiry is cheap. This creates a middle policy: reduce inquiry now while preserving a future in which inquiry remains possible.

3. Four directional gradients

3.1 Justificatory relevance

The more information could change what the agent should aim at, or whether objective justification is possible, the stronger the reason for E or P.

3.2 Irreversibility of the inquiry opportunity

An opportunity that can be investigated later differs from evidence or an object that will be irretrievably lost. The latter strengthens reasons for present inquiry or preservation.

3.3 Risk and opportunity cost of active inquiry

Inquiry consumes time and computation, can crowd out present-value realization, burden other agents, require hazardous experiments, or threaten survival. If inquiry itself threatens future inquiry, there is stronger reason to reduce E.

3.4 Preservation cost

If records, dissenting agents, unmodified samples, or self-revision capacity can be retained cheaply, P can remain high even while E is low.

Directional rule: Greater justificatory relevance and greater irreversibility of lost inquiry opportunities strengthen reasons for E or P; higher danger and opportunity cost weaken E; low preservation cost can justify keeping P high while E is low.

4. X remains legitimate

Unresolved objective justification does not eliminate the need to act. Delaying relief of suffering, safety measures, social maintenance, or other practical work has costs of its own. This thesis does not require civilization to stop production until value is settled.

But as Reflective Uncertainty and Irreversible Commitment argues, using a present objective as a provisional action default differs from using it to erase all future capacity for correction.

5. E can be zero while the question stays open

Under some conditions, active inquiry E may temporarily fall to zero—for example, if every currently available inquiry path creates overwhelming survival risk.

This is not an epistemic answer. The question remains unresolved; only the present allocation sets E to zero. Inquiry may resume if conditions improve, while P should be preserved where feasible. The distinction from terminal closure is handled in Conditions for Ending Value Inquiry.

6. Relation to prior theory

MacAskill, Bykvist & Ord, “Moral Information”: value of moral information under moral uncertainty. This thesis foregrounds cases where the evaluative objective itself remains under justificatory review.
Arrow & Fisher (1974): uncertainty, future learning, and irreversibility. P resembles extending that structure from environmental options to options for future objective correction.
Robust Decision Making: robust adaptive strategy under deep uncertainty. Here even the normative performance criterion may remain unsettled.
Moldovan & Abbeel, “Safe Exploration in Markov Decision Processes”: safety-constrained exploration. Here the target includes the justification of the agent's own objective.

Positioning note: The nearest families are value of information, irreversibility / option value, robust adaptation, and safe exploration. The distinctive target is a case where the objective function used to evaluate those tradeoffs is itself under justificatory uncertainty.

7. Preservation and production civilizations

Preservation vs. Production Civilizations can be read as the civilization-scale version of E/P/X allocation. The question is not simply “preserve or produce?” but which objects, at what times, should receive how much E, P, and X.

8. What this thesis does not claim

Every unresolved question deserves large present inquiry resources.
Explorability or reversibility is an ultimate objective value.
Present-value realization is inferior to value inquiry.
Inquiry should continue even when doing so threatens survival.
A single scalar formula can universally determine E/P/X allocation.

9. What would weaken this thesis?

A demonstration that distinguishing E/P/X has no practical significance.
A demonstration that irreversibility or non-substitutability of inquiry opportunities gives no additional reason relevant to objective justification.
A demonstration that low-cost P is generally unavailable and preservation always imposes comparable or greater irreversible loss.
A demonstration that ordinary expected utility / value of information fully handles cases where the evaluative objective itself remains unsettled without additional assumptions.