lantern

wanderland-as-native-attention

Wanderland as Native Attention

RAG where the retriever IS the substrate

Core Claim

In conventional RAG, retrieval is an external stage that fetches documents which are then fed to an LLM; attention only runs inside the model over whatever you retrieved.

In Wanderland, retrieval is the attention mechanism: fences, pages, and graph queries are Q over a persistent K/V field (the corpus), with layered caches providing V at multiple abstraction levels.

Attention Mapping

K (Keys)

  • Fence identities (slug:fence), tags, links, metadata, schema descriptors
  • These define where patterns live and how they can be matched

Q (Queries)

  • peek(slug:fence) → single-head local attention
  • peek(slug) (all fences on a page) → multi-head attention within a local region
  • query(pattern/tags/graph-walk) → global attention over the entire DAG

V (Values)

  • L3 (seed/raw): code / fence definitions (tool body)
  • L4 (sprout/substituted): computed data results (materialized fence outputs)
  • L5 (clouds/rendered): rendered documents / reports (middleware views over L4)

Every time you:

  • Address a fence, page, or subgraph → you're emitting a Q
  • The graph structure, indices, and tags act as K
  • The cached results at various levels are your V, already stored, provenance-tagged, and reusable

Layered RAG as Layered Attention

Conventional GraphRAG papers argue that putting RAG on top of a knowledge graph gives better structure and retrieval granularity.

Wanderland goes further: the graph is the primary medium of thought, and:

  • L3 is "tool code space" (functions)
  • L4 is "fact/data space" (results)
  • L5 is "narrative space" (documents/views)

Queries can target any combination of these levels, compose arbitrary context windows, and feed them into:

  • Other fences (closed-loop computation)
  • External LLMs (classical RAG)
  • Human-facing documents and dashboards

The Frame

The system isn't "docs with RAG" but a persistent, queryable attention field where:

  • Retrieval and computation are the same operation (fence invocation)
  • Context windows are assembled by graph traversal, not ad-hoc chunking
  • Provenance flows with results across layers

This is an externalizable mind rather than a pile of markdown.

Citations

Citations: 7 total — 🟢 0 | 🟡 5 | 🔴 2
🟡 Chen, Y., et al. (2025). Executable Knowledge Graphs for Replicating AI Research. arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.17795. https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.17795
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🟡 Sun, Q., et al. (2024). Docs2KG: Unified Knowledge Graph Construction from Heterogeneous Documents. arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.02962. https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.02962
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🟡 Eckelt, K., Gadhave, K., Lex, A., Streit, M. (2024). Loops: Leveraging Provenance and Visualization to Support Exploratory Data Analysis in Notebooks. IEEE VIS. https://vdl.sci.utah.edu/publications/2024_vis_loops/
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🟡 Fowler, M. (2005). Event Sourcing. martinfowler.com. https://martinfowler.com/eaaDev/EventSourcing.html
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🟡 Friston, K. (2010). The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory? Nature Reviews Neuroscience. https://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/~karl/NRN.pdf
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🔴 Knuth, D.E. (1984). Literate Programming. The Computer Journal, 27(2), 97-111.
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🔴 Mac Lane, S. (1971). Categories for the Working Mathematician. Springer.
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The Quantum/Simulation Connection

Simulation Without a Basement

If the universe is a context-accumulating DAG whose edges are free-energy transfers and whose nodes are resolved states, then there is no coherent contrast class "non-simulated reality" to oppose "simulation."

Bostrom/Musk-style arguments smuggle in a substrate that is somehow not computational. They end up asking whether we're in "base" or "derived" levels instead of noticing that once your ontology is purely process/computation, "base" stops doing work.

On this framing, "we are simulation" cashes out as "we are subgraphs in the only kind of structure that can support persistent, self-updating distinctions: a lazy, energy-constrained DAG."

Lazy Evaluation and Quantum Thunks

Treating the wavefunction as a thunk—code plus context describing all the ways resolution could go if forced—aligns with lazy evaluation: the universe never computes what is not causally required.

"Superposition" is not "the particle is in many states" but "there is a not-yet-forced description of how future nodes would look if this part of the graph were connected along various edges."

Quantum measurement as LOOKUP/FETCH: a new causal edge is drawn, the thunk is forced, a new node is written. State-update rules become graph-rewrite rules.

Measurement, Uncertainty, Entanglement as Graph Facts

Heisenberg uncertainty: constraint on partially forcing a thunk. Specifying one observable narrows which graph rewrites remain consistent; the complementary observable loses determinate status.

No fact before measurement: no node yet in the DAG. Collapse = when an interaction creates a stable node, that value becomes shared context for descendants.

Entanglement: not "instantaneous influences" but "multiple downstream paths querying the same upstream subgraph." Nonlocal correlations from shared ancestry, not superluminal signals.

Free Energy and Time

Friston: systems minimize free energy over time.

The move here: each LOOKUP-FETCH-SPLICE IS one tick. Time is the sequence of free-energy-reducing graph rewrites. No external clock.

Markov blankets become local graph cuts defining which edges carry surprise and which updates count as "inside."

Distance as Path Cost

Distance = ticks needed to route a free-energy gradient from here to there.

  • Speed of light = upper bound on how fast free energy shuffles into new nodes
  • Planck scale = lower bound on node granularity

Physics Citations

Citations: 5 total — 🟢 1 | 🟡 3 | 🔴 1
🟡 Friston, K. (2010). The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory? Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(2), 127-138. https://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/~karl/NRN.pdf
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🟡 Fuchs, C.A. (2017). On Participatory Realism. In Information and Interaction (pp. 113-134). Springer. https://arxiv.org/abs/1601.04360
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🔴 Wheeler, J.A. (1990). Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links. In Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information. Westview Press.
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🟡 Rovelli, C. (1996). Relational Quantum Mechanics. International Journal of Theoretical Physics, 35(8), 1637-1678. https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9609002
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      "author": "Rovelli, C.",
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🟢 Müller, M. (2020). Law without law: from observer states to physics via algorithmic information theory. Quantum, 4, 301. https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.01826
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Provenance

Document

  • Status: 🔴 Unverified

Fences

wanderland-as-native-attention-citations-fence-0

  • Status: 🔴 Unverified

wanderland-as-native-attention-physics-citations-fence-0

  • Status: 🔴 Unverified

North

slots:
- slug: bidirectional-attention-thesis
  context:
  - Native attention implements the bidirectional attention thesis

West

slots:
- slug: universe-as-context-accumulating-dag
  context:
  - Same ontology, implementation perspective

South

slots:
- slug: wanderland-paper
  context:
  - This is the theoretical framing for the paper
↑ northbidirectional-attention-thesis
↓ southwanderland-paper
← westuniverse-as-context-accumulating-dag