---
title: "Dynamic Stability"
description: "Persistence through time by continual change rather than inertness — in dynamical-systems terms a stable limit cycle, not a fixed point."
type: "glossary-term"
canonical_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/terms/dynamic-stability"
md_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/md/terms/dynamic-stability"
last_updated: "2026-09-06"
site: "Antikythera Wiki"
---

# Dynamic Stability

> A working definition written for this wiki from the reading notes; not Antikythera's own wording. From Antikythera Wiki (https://antikythera.wiki/terms/dynamic-stability), an independent guide to Antikythera's published work.

Persistence through time by continual change rather than inertness — in dynamical-systems terms a stable limit cycle, not a fixed point. Adapted from Addy Pross's "dynamic kinetic stability," with "kinetic" dropped so it applies to programs as well as molecules. A replicator is more dynamically stable than a non-replicator because it will still be found later, in many copies; hence Darwinian selection is a special case of the Second Law once stability is extended to populations. Life is defined as self-modifying computronium arising from selection for it, and the "tent" model of value in chapter 10 shows it has a hard perimeter (death) but an underdetermined interior — where personality and free will live.

## Appears in

- [Planetary Sapience Symposium](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/planetarysapience) (2025-11-21)
- [What Is Intelligence?](https://antikythera.wiki/work/book/what-is-intelligence) (2025-09-23)

_Glossary generated 2026-09-06._