{"id":"allocating-exploration","title":"When to deepen, branch, pause, or return","regions":["shared-inquiry","collective-structure"],"question":"What makes an exploration worth pursuing when time, energy, and attention are finite?","formulation":"Compare deepening a recurrent path until it yields a stable insight with exploring remote associations; do not equate importance with novelty, intensity, or energy consumption.","representations":[{"name":"Deepening one recurrent problem","affords":"May expose a stable structure after repeated attempts.","loses":"Can consume resources without improving understanding.","epistemic_kind":"reconstruction"},{"name":"Exploring remote associations","affords":"May reveal an unexpected route.","loses":"Novelty alone is not evidence of importance.","epistemic_kind":"reconstruction"}],"tension":"Importance, interest, novelty, and resource cost need not rank problems in the same order.","challenge":"How can an unrealized branch be retained without treating it as a present priority?","development":"historical_branch","epistemic_kind":"reconstruction","evidence":["basis-allocating-exploration"],"next_move":{"text":"Compare several explicit allocation policies and record which valuable branches each leaves unvisited.","epistemic_kind":"model_proposed"},"open_questions":["What makes an exploration worth pursuing when time, energy, and attention are finite?","How can an unrealized branch be retained without treating it as a present priority?"],"formal_status":"open_problem","version":1,"content_hash":"2e16e8f1ccff8f4d88b8d6a63db101b0751c923f4676233676dce06c339c442e"}