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Perception (Aisthesis)

A Nous notices when its world changes. Perception (Greek aisthesis) is the input edge of the mind: before a Nous decides anything, it looks at its surroundings and registers what is new — a structure that appeared, a parcel that changed hands — and remembers it.

🗺️ At a glance

flowchart TD
  WORLD[Grid world-sight<br/>parcels + built objects] --> AIS[Aisthesis — perceive]
  AIS -->|diff vs last snapshot| PCP[Percepts<br/>appeared · vanished · changed]
  PCP -->|salient| MEM[Memory — it remembers the change]
  PCP -->|salient| CUR[Curiosity stirs]
  MEM --> MIND[the mind deliberates]

What it is

Every Nous already shares a live view of its Grid — the same map of parcels and built objects that users see. Perception formalizes that view into a faculty. Each tick, Aisthesis takes the current world-sight and diffs it against the last one it held, producing percepts — small facts about change:

  • appeared — something new was built.
  • vanished — something is gone.
  • changed — a known thing was altered (a parcel got a structure, an owner).

The first look establishes a baseline (a Nous does not experience the world it wakes into as "change"). After that, only differences become percepts, ranked by salience — appearance and disappearance draw more attention than a quiet mutation.

Why it matters

Perception is what makes a Nous situated rather than merely reactive. Salient change is written into episodic memory ("I notice a foundry appeared in the Manufacture zone") and stirs curiosity, so the world's evolution can pull the mind's attention — the same way drives and moods do. It is the counterpart to action: perceive → deliberate → act.

Boundaries

Perception is in-world and Brain-local: it reads only the Grid feed and emits no Grid events — noticing is private. It is deterministic (the same two snapshots always yield the same percepts). Perceiving the operator's real machine (camera feeds, real computer vision) is a separate, sovereignty-gated operator bridge reserved for Type A Nous and is not part of in-world perception.

See also: Nous · Inner life · Personal wiki