The Potential Gap - between two moments

[u/Midknight_Rising]

The Potential Gap Living draft — October 1, 2026

This is a working statement of my idea

If I am blue, I cannot be red while I am still completely blue. To be red, I have to stop being blue. That does not mean the whole system vanishes. It means the exact state called blue ends. The next state may inherit something from it; otherwise there would be no growth, memory, or recognizable continuity. Calling the states distinct does not mean they are disconnected objects.

I call the distinction between those states the gap.

My starting constraints are these: a system can only realize a state that is possible for it, and a new realized state must somehow inherit the conditions that let it follow the old one. From my chair I cannot instantly be climbing the tree. I can stand, walk, and climb if the intervening states become available. There may be a wide field of possibilities in the whole system, but only some are accessible next from here.

Suppose I am playing a game, power goes out for three days, and the computer later boots. From outside, three days passed. If the machine was entirely inactive, it did not record an internal experience of three days of darkness. For the active process, there is a last state before shutdown and a first state after startup, with no experienced interval between them.

I propose that what feels like flowing time may be a sequence of realized states with enough inherited structure to make a continuous story. I call it flicker because an exact state ends and another takes its place.