# Recursive World-Building **Domain:** Simulation / Civilizational Development / Governance **Doc Type:** Canonical Concept Node **Maturity:** Developed **Related:** [[wiki/World Simulation (Control Substrate)|World Simulation]], [[wiki/Simulated World|Simulated World]], [[wiki/Layer-Relative Reality|Layer-Relative Reality]] --- ## Definition **Recursive World-Building** occurs when an inhabited constructed world develops the capacity to generate another persistent world containing agents or possible subjects of its own. ## Context The concept distinguishes a simulated civilization that merely executes assigned routines from one that becomes technologically generative. The lower layer acquires the creator capacity used to justify its own subordination, collapsing creation as a stable caste boundary. In [[wiki/The Thirteenth Floor (1999)|The Thirteenth Floor]], the 1999 layer is not simply one of many simulations. It is exceptional because it creates 1937 and becomes both creation and creator. ## Governance Context Recursive world-building produces nested custody. Each layer may depend on an administrator above while acquiring obligations to inhabitants below. World authorship therefore creates duties without conferring ownership. ## Key Insight **A created civilization crosses a constitutional threshold when it becomes capable of creating another field of lived experience.** ## Sources / Provenance - Canonicalized from [[wiki/The Thirteenth Floor (1999)|The Thirteenth Floor]]. - Contemporary world models are component-level analogues only; they do not establish inhabited conscious worlds. ## See Also [[wiki/Residual Sovereign|Residual Sovereign]], [[wiki/World Shutdown Due Process|World Shutdown Due Process]], [[wiki/Rights|Rights]]