The Replicator-Optimization Mechanism: A Scale-Relative Formalism for Persistence-Conditioned Dynamics with Application to Consent-Based Metaethics (opens in new tab)

This paper formalizes a widely used dynamical class--replicator-mutator dynamics and Price-style selection-and-transmission--and makes explicit the modeling choices (scale, atomic unit, interaction topology, transmission kernel) that determine how this class instantiates across domains. The backbone is known; we do not claim to have discovered selection. The novel contributions are threefold: (i) a scale-relative kernel parameterization where atomic units are themselves parameters, enabling s...