# Epistemic limits

`kaal:entity:epistemic-limits`

**Status.** derived

This node is assembled mechanically from the 2 claims that carry the concept tag `epistemic-limits`. It is a roster of what the corpus says under this term. It is **not** an adjudicated definition: no single statement here has been ruled canonical, and no first-appearance call has been made. Read the claims and judge for yourself.

## Every claim under this term

2 claims across 2 works, 2021 to 2026.

**2021**

- [3782220-034](https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/3782220-034) [normative/argued] -- Scientists do not deserve and can never earn the authority to rule on whether we should ask what meaning or values lie behind the rules guiding the universe; on that subject they have less authority than those who study spirituality, theology, morality, or poetry.
  > Scientists do not deserve to rule on the question of whether we should ask what the meaning is behind the rules guiding the universe, or the values they might reflect. They have less author- ity on this subject than someone who studies spirituality or theology or morality or poetry.
  Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, The Importance of Transcendental Unifying Values for Decentralization (2021). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3782220

**2026**

- [6269518-008](https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/6269518-008) [failure/argued] *(failure mode)* -- Requiring agents to assign continuous-valued citation weights presupposes a quantification of the relative contribution of prior work that is epistemically unknowable, because knowledge production is not a linear combination of inputs amenable to precise fractional decomposition.
  > In practice, this quantification is epistemically unknowable. Was a prior collaborator's insight worth 0.37 or 0.62 of the current agent's work? The question has no determinate answer. Knowledge production is not a linear combination of inputs amenable to precise fractional decomposition.
  Wulf A. Kaal, Citation Honesty Mechanisms in Weighted Directed Acyclic Graph Governance (2026). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=6269518

## Verify

Every claim above resolves to a record carrying a verbatim source quote, the sha256 of the source PDF, and a preformatted citation. Nothing here asks to be taken on trust.

    curl -s https://wulfkaal.github.io/entities/epistemic-limits.md | sha256sum

**Canonical form.** This markdown file is the canonical hashed representation of this entity node. Its sha256 is the content hash.