AI-generated conjecture · a wager, not a finding
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The pecia is a packet
Status is derived only from the shepherd-authored triage/prediction data above -- community submissions and claims are a separate overlay and can never change it (see the participation panel below).
Claim (verbatim)
The pecia is a packet. Packet-switched content distribution splits a file into chunks that travel independently and reassemble at the destination; the medieval university book trade did the same with texts. Under the pecia system, stationers chunked an exemplar into pieces rented out separately, so a single copy could descend from different exemplar lineages piece by piece as scribes drew successive peciae from whatever copies sat on the shelf. That should leave an error signature continuous-exemplar copying cannot produce: stemmatic affiliation switching precisely at known pecia boundaries. In collated pecia traditions such as Aquinas and Peter Lombard, a large share of surviving copies — two-fifths or more — should change nearest stemmatic relative at one or more attested boundaries, with the switch probability at boundaries running five-fold or more above the within-pecia rate, while non-pecia control traditions align with those boundaries only at chance. No boundary effect kills it.
Prediction clause (verbatim)
In collated pecia traditions (Aquinas, Peter Lombard), >= 40% of surviving copies change nearest stemmatic relative at one or more attested pecia boundaries, and the probability of an affiliation switch at a boundary exceeds the within-pecia switch probability by a factor >= 5, while non-pecia control traditions show boundary alignment at chance; no boundary effect kills it.
Kill-dataset (verbatim)
Kill: the Leonine Commission's critical apparatus for Aquinas cross-indexed with Destrez's pecia-boundary tables.
Nobody has run this test. The kill-data is named above. If you can run it — or you know the paper that already settles it — claim the kill or submit the prior scholarship. Kills and prior scholarship are credited here, by name, as they come in.
On Inferpedia
This conjecture has been linked to the following subject pages on Inferpedia — an encyclopedia of the missing, now in limited preview.
Provenance
Run: Fresh agent generation · model: claude-fable-5
Generated by a fresh Fable-tier instance at maximum effort with generation-first blindness (no repo/web/DB access); titles-only knowledge of existing items, embedded in titles_supplied per the batch-2 lane rule; prompt pre-committed in docs/GOAL_CONJECTURES_BATCH3_20260705.md (b043140). Novelty unverified by construction. titles_supplied stripped to the committed sidecar conjecture_fresh_fablemax_batch3_titles_supplied_20260705.md at import (schema additionalProperties:false; relaxation queued).
Novelty / leakage triage
anticipated in the literature — this exact test has never been run
Pecia mechanics are well documented and a related phenomenon is OBSERVED (scribal hand-changes at pecia boundaries within single codices of Sentences-commentary traditions); the conjecture's distinct claim — stemmatic nearest-relative switching between complete copies at boundaries, against non-pecia controls — was not located as tested.
- 'Quod Exemplaria vera habeant et correcta: the distribution and purpose of the pecia system' — The institutional mechanics
Predictions
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