Profit and degree-of-life are equivalent credit signals measuring how much an element contributes to global coherence.

Entities in the same semantic neighborhood but without a typed relation to this one — candidates for new edges or unrecognized duplicates.

• Multi-scale coherence may be the cause of aliveness, or only its signature—the causal direction remains open.claim0.775
• Multi-scale competency reduces the credit assignment problem in evolution, enabling faster adaptation by shielding negative pleiotropic effects.hypothesis0.768
  If correct, lineages with high modular competency should show accelerated evolvability and more complex body plans.
• The difference in degree of life is inherent in the thing itself, not just a personal value judgment.claim0.767
  Ontological claim that the life quality resides in the object, not the observer.
• The degree of life is not merely a distinction between beautiful and ugly things but is detectable in every corner of the world.claim0.761
  Broadens the scope of life from aesthetics to a fundamental property.
• The relative degree of life is already there, in the computable, mathematical, structure of the space.claim0.761
  Affirmation that life is not merely subjective but an objective, calculable feature of space.
• The degree of life of each center is correlated with the degree to which that center is a picture of the self, and this holds for all people, not just individuals.claim0.760
  Proposition 2 of the Mid-Book Appendix; the claim that self-likeness is a universal, species-wide measure of life.
• The feeling that there is more life in one case than another is correlated with a structural difference in the things themselves, which can be made precise and measured.claim0.757
  Forward‑looking claim that the life quality has an objective basis, to be demonstrated later.
• In Alexander's framework, a center's degree of life is a function of surrounding centers' configurations and their life-degree—a recursive definition.claim0.755