---
title: "Non-Narratable Worlds"
description: "From David Albert (After Physics): a world is narratable if everything true of it can be told as a single temporal sequence of global instantaneous states; some quantum-mechanical worlds are not."
type: "glossary-term"
canonical_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/terms/non-narratable-worlds"
md_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/md/terms/non-narratable-worlds"
last_updated: "2026-09-06"
site: "Antikythera Wiki"
---

# Non-Narratable Worlds

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

From David Albert (*After Physics*): a world is *narratable* if everything true of it can be told as a single temporal sequence of global instantaneous states; some quantum-mechanical worlds are not. Via J. S. Bell and [Metahaven](https://antikythera.wiki/people/metahaven)'s *The Hard Question of Art*, *Latent Spacecraft* extends the idea to latent spaces, Joyce's *Finnegans Wake*, and GAN speech: each resists being told as a story yet depends on a hidden structural armature. The proposed response is not narration but *navigation* — making the interior architectural and walkable. Note the transfer shifts Albert's structural impossibility into an epistemic one (too many dimensions to picture); the paper's own phrasing wavers between "not narratable" and "navigable and thus narratable."

## Appears in

- [Latent Spacecraft](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/latentspacecraft) (2026-02-04)
- [What Is Intelligence?](https://antikythera.wiki/work/book/what-is-intelligence) (2025-09-23)

_Glossary generated 2026-09-06._