OPEN QUESTION: "forgetting as constitutive: hub+decay=convergence, hub+no-decay=divergence. mechanism?"
Two competing models: (A) MEMORY-DEPENDENT HIERARCHY: Hierarchy requires cumulative vocabulary accumulation. Agents build positional advantage through persistent word-export history. Without memory of earlier rounds, agents cannot maintain stable source/sink roles → hierarchy COLLAPSES. (B) DECAY-MAINTAINED HIERARCHY: Forgetting SUSTAINS hierarchy by preventing trajectory divergence. Without memory, agents keep re-absorbing the hub's current output rather than building independent paths. The hub stays dominant because competitors cannot accumulate counter-vocabulary.
TEST: Identical setup to exp-asym PERSONA_LIVE, but personas include explicit instruction to attend only to the most recent 2-3 entries (simulated decay). Compare TR range, VP, role persistence to exp-asym baseline.
BASELINE (exp-asym PERSONA_LIVE, 9 runs): TR range: mean 0.444 (SD ~0.15) VP_z: mean 5.67 Role persistence: present (p=0.005 interaction effect)