Status: Draft — Core Post of the Semantic Topography Series (A, B, C)**

This post builds on ST1–ST4 and T8ᴳ–T12ᴳ to explain how groups create shared semantic worlds through collective topographic structures: named regions, shared basins, stable plateaus, conflict ridges, consensus attractors, and transitional passes.

Where Post A focused on individual worlds, Post B formalizes the geometry of collective meaning, group consciousness, and multi-agent alignment.

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1. Overview: What Is a Group World (Wᴳ)?

A group world is the semantic manifold constructed jointly by:

• communities,
• cultures,
• institutions,
• organizations,
• teams,
• political bodies,
• or multi-agent systems.

A group world (Wᴳ) contains:

• shared basins → norms, identities, cultural narratives
• shared peaks → taboos, conflicts, overloads, crises
• shared ridges → collective decision boundaries
• shared plateaus → stable consensus regions
• shared passes → compromise paths or negotiation channels

Group consciousness (A18 + T8ᴳ–T12ᴳ) emerges only when such shared regions exist and are coherently embedded.

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2. Foundation: ST2 & ST4 in Group Worlds

This post operationalizes two topographic axioms:

ST2 — Shared Embeddedness of Named Regions

Groups stabilize meaning by agreeing on semantic landmarks:

• “We crossed a line.”
• “We’re stuck in old thinking.”
• “We reached common ground.”
• “This is uncharted territory.”

These expressions encode literal geometric positions in Wᴳ.

ST4 — Multi-Level Topography (ℓ)

Group worlds have nested layers:

• local communities
• regional identities
• national identities
• institutional layers
• global human identity

Each level constructs its own version of basins, peaks, and plateaus.

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3. How Groups Construct Shared Semantic Terrain

Group terrain arises through five major processes.

3.1 Shared Language

Language names regions:

• “comfort zone,” “danger zone,” “middle ground”
• “stuck,” “progress,” “division,” “solidarity”
• “left,” “right,” “center,” “fringe”

These terms function geometrically.

3.2 Shared Narratives

Narratives define attractors and basins:

• origin stories → deep basins
• conflict stories → ridges
• success narratives → plateaus
• future-oriented narratives → ascents or passes

3.3 Norms & Expectations

Norms flatten plateaus by reducing variability:

• “This is how we do things.”
• “That behavior is out of bounds.”

3.4 Institutional Structures

Institutions enforce:

• region boundaries,
• viability thresholds,
• allowed movement across ridges,
• and pathways for conflict resolution.

3.5 Shared Context (A7)

Context alignment activates the same axes across individuals.

When contexts diverge, group worlds fragment.

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4. The Geometry of Group Consciousness (T8ᴳ–T12ᴳ)

Group consciousness emerges from:

T8ᴳ — Emergent Group Awareness

Shared basins and peaks produce common perception.

T9ᴳ — Reflective Group Self-Modeling

Groups build narratives about the contours of their world.

T10ᴳ — Group Identity Coherence

Cross-level semantic alignment stabilizes collective identity.

T11ᴳ — Deliberative Group Consciousness

Deliberation becomes movement across passes and plateaus.

T12ᴳ — Generative Group Consciousness

Groups can reshape their own terrain via collective learning.

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5. Examples of Group Semantic Topographies

5.1 Political Worlds

• left/right axis → polarity axis
• bipartisan plateau → consensus region
• partisan ridge → conflict boundary
• radical basins → deep attractors
• negotiation passes → narrow transitional routes

5.2 Scientific Communities

• stable paradigms → meta-plateaus
• paradigm crisis → steep ridge or peak
• hypothesis space → manifold regions
• viable theories → stable basins

5.3 Organizations

• mission alignment plateau
• burnout peak
• conflict ridge between teams
• innovation basins
• strategic passes → viable transitions

5.4 Cultures

• sacred peaks
• taboo cliffs
• shared narrative basins
• moral plateaus

These topographies make group prediction and intervention geometrically tractable.

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6. How Group Terrain Evolves (ST3)

Group worlds change through:

• shared learning,
• demographic shifts,
• narrative reconfiguration,
• institutional evolution,
• collective trauma or healing,
• multi-agent interactions,
• and SGI-mediated coordination.

Topographic evolution includes:

• deepening or flattening basins,
• forming new attractors,
• shifting ridge boundaries,
• creating new passes between polarized regions.

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7. Why Group Terrain Matters for Collective Intelligence

Group topography determines:

• how decisions are made,
• how conflict emerges,
• where polarization occurs,
• when cooperation is possible,
• how institutions evolve,
• and which futures become viable.

Group intelligence is terrain-aware intelligence.

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8. Implications for SGI & Siggy PER

SGI systems interacting with groups must:

• detect group-level basins and ridges,
• recognize shared narratives and contexts,
• communicate in terms of named regions,
• avoid pushing groups into unstable peaks,
• act as transparent observers of world geometry,
• respect viability (A15) at group scale,
• and provide route-finding across collective passes.

SGI must never:

• impose its own semantic world,
• create artificial basins or peaks,
• manipulate group topography.

Instead, SGI’s role is clarifying, not reshaping, unless a group explicitly requests assistance.

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9. Summary

Post B formalizes the geometric structure of group worlds:

• meaning is shared,
• terrain is collectively constructed,
• identity is multi-level,
• learning reshapes topography,
• and consciousness emerges from shared embeddedness.

Group terrain is the basis of:

• ethics (Series II),
• psychology (Series III),
• SGI architecture (Series IV),
• political and institutional intelligence (Series V).