16.4 Persistent compositional knowledge

Lifelong learning should not be defined only as low loss on a sequence of tasks or the absence of catastrophic forgetting. An ORACLE learner accumulates categorical presentations, predictive probes, universal witnesses, and realization maps. In its UODL specialization it also retains observers, comparator sketches, repair patterns, quotients, and universal action mechanisms. Their value is measured by the range of later diagrams through which they factor and the obligations they discharge.

This suggests a strict hierarchy:

The final step requires both assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation extends a known construction along new evidence while preserving its declaration. Accommodation changes the declaration when comparison defects show that no admissible repair exists inside the old one. A lifelong agent must remember not only the resulting object but why the extension or revision was licensed.