Precedent and the Laws

The principle of precedence is perhaps Smolin's most radical proposal: that the laws of nature themselves are not fixed but emerge through a temporal process analogous to the common law. When a genuinely novel situation arises in the universe — a configuration of matter, energy, or information that has no exact precedent in cosmological history — the outcome is not determined by any preexisting law. It is genuinely open. The resolution of that situation establishes a precedent, which governs how subsequent similar situations resolve. Over time, the accumulation of precedents produces regularities that appear to be eternal laws but are in fact the crystallized residue of past resolutions. The implication for the AI transition is direct: the dams built during this moment of radical novelty are constitutive precedents that will shape the governance of technologies not yet imagined.