Part XXII: The Pianoforte

Part XXII: The Pianoforte

22.1 Mrs. Curwen, 1886

Observation 22.1: "Mrs. Curwen always draws upon the known to teach the unknown."

Definition 22.1 (The Curwen Maxims):

• Teach the easy before the difficult
• Teach the thing before the sign
• Teach one fact at a time, and the commonest fact first
• Proceed from the known to the unknown
• Never tell a pupil anything that you can help him to discover for himself
• Let the pupil derive some pleasure from his knowledge

Theorem 22.1 (Universal Pedagogy): These principles work for any student because you're not teaching them to think like you—you're sharing a representational system that lets them arrive at the same place through their own path.

22.2 The Isomorphism

Theorem 22.2 (Same Music, Different Players): The reading list that onboards a junior dev also onboards a language model.

Audience	Same Method
Piano student, 1886	Curwen pianoforte
Junior developer, 2025	Oculus navigation
Language model, 2025	Context accumulation
Domain expert, 2026	Reference signal authoring

Corollary 22.1: Same nodes. Same navigation. Same music. Different players.

22.3 The Innuendo Philosophy

Definition 22.2 (Prompt Engineering by Innuendo): Don't tell. Lead. Don't dump. Trickle. Don't prescribe. Let conclusions form.

Theorem 22.3 (Context as Curriculum): Shaping context isn't just about providing information. It's about:

• How you provide it
• When you provide it
• What you don't say (leaving room for inference)

Corollary 22.2: The conversation that meanders through topics before tackling work produces better results than dumping requirements upfront. By the time we get to "now do the thing," we're primed.

22.4 Curriculum as Alignment

Theorem 22.4 (The Identity): The curriculum is the alignment.

Proof: If the method lets any student arrive at the same understanding through their own path, then:

• Teaching a human = alignment of human
• Teaching a model = alignment of model
• Teaching domain experts to write reference signals = alignment of domains

Corollary 22.3: You're not releasing a whitepaper. You're releasing a piano method.

22.5 The Propagation Pattern

Theorem 22.5 (Methods Don't Have Owners): Piano methods don't have owners. They have students who become teachers who have students.

Definition 22.3 (The Spread Pattern): Not through VCs. Through instruction.

Propagation Type	Mechanism	Owner
Product	Sales	Company
Platform	Network effects	Company
Method	Teaching	Nobody

Final Theorem 22.6 (The Democratization is the Pedagogy): The democratization isn't the architecture. The democratization is the pedagogy.

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"Teach the thing before the sign." — Mrs. Curwen, 1886

The same instruction that taught piano teaches reference signals. 138 years apart. Same method.

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• 2026-01-09 19:36: Node created by mcp - AYNL paper chunking - Part XXII

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