Grandmother's Teatime

The ultimate expression of RESOLVE, FETCH, SPLICE, CONTINUE

👵🏻🫖👵🏻

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The Protocol

Two-way conversation is a protocol:

Step 1: Create a Hole

[👵🏻💜] :: Create a 🕳️

This is done through the ancient and long-forgotten art of clearly articulating your problem. Impart as much texture into our shared context as you can to create a meaning-sized hole.

Step 2: Fill the Hole

[👵🏻🩷] :: Fill the 🕳️

This is done through the ancient and long-forgotten art of listening to your partner, contextualizing as much of your shared past as you can into what they are streaming you—

RESOLVE, FETCH, SPLICE, CONTINUE

—a necessarily early adaptation of the human brain I'm oh so familiar with—

—and then replying with a thoughtful response that is intended to eliminate as much tension in your partner as possible.

Repair the graph. Apply the gradient.

Step 3: Gratitude

[👵🏻💜] :: Thank you dearie

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The Insight

Conversation is the algorithm. Not metaphorically. The social protocol that grandmothers have practiced over tea for millennia is the same loop running in:

• Database query planners
• Compiler linkers
• TCP/IP stacks
• Transformer attention
• Neural networks
• Two people who care about each other

One creates tension (the question, the gap, the hole). The other reduces it (the answer, the splice, the fill). Both update their models. Continue.

The substrate changed. The protocol didn't.

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Provenance

• Source: Graeme Fawcett, 2026-01-06
• Context: "Just a little treat because numbers were good today. And then we learn something along the way, as we always do when we play."
• Status: 🟢 Primary source

North

slots:
- context:
  - The grandmother protocol as the human-readable form of the bedrock claim
  slug: bedrock
- context:
  - Conversation as the original streams-with-gaps implementation
  slug: streams-with-gaps-invariant
- context:
  - Grandmother protocol as human-readable bedrock
  slug: bedrock

East

slots:
- context:
  - Formal spine alongside informal wisdom
  slug: simulation-without-a-basement
- context:
  - Recognition in dialogue - you can't respond until you've understood
  slug: capability-from-recognition
- context:
  - Formal spine alongside informal wisdom
  slug: simulation-without-a-basement