The Law of Cognitive Cancellation: Genesis Mechanism of Cognitive Internal Friction and Proof of "Walk-Through Equals Optimality" Orthogonal Convergence in Complex Systems
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Across enterprise management, public governance, large-scale R&D coordination, and multi-agent artificial intelligence (Multi-Agent AI)—and indeed across all Open Complex Giant Systems (OCGS)—human decision-making has long been governed by an entrenched axiom: that multiple operational objectives within a complex system (such as on-time delivery versus low inventory, high equipment utilization versus low procurement cost, or regulatory safety versus operational agility) represent inherently irreconcilable Pareto trade-offs. Consequently, for over a century, management science and operations research have relied either on localized departmental optimization followed by bargaining compromises, or on mathematical multi-objective weighted trade-off functions. Grounded in first principles of systems and complexity science, this paper strips away domain-specific appearances to formulate and prove the foundational physical and cognitive law governing work efficiency in complex giant systems: The Law of Cognitive Cancellation. First, we show that pure objective physical nature strictly obeys the Principle of Least Action and never exhibits self-defeating internal friction; all excess internal friction waste heat (ΔWcancel>0ΔWcancel>0) beyond irreducible physical baseline dissipation in complex systems originates 100% from Cognitive Vector Cancellation induced by human cognitive limitations—specifically, local blindness caused by the 4±14±1 working memory channel bottleneck, and dimensional mis-binding that artificially couples independent dimensions. Second, prior to touching the hard physical boundary of absolute resource scarcity, apparent trade-offs among operational KPIs are not objective conflicts, but pseudo trade-offs manufactured by flawed cognitive rules bolted onto shared physical nodes. Third, we formally prove the "Walk-Through Equals Optimality" Convergence Theorem: in any open complex giant system, if and only if (1) all hard constraints (objective physical boundaries) and soft constraints (system target specifications) are systematically walked through along the holographic causal chain, and (2) artificially coupled dimensions are orthogonally decoupled to eliminate cognitive vector cancellation (ΔWcancel→0ΔWcancel→0), the system requires no weighted compromise; multiple previously conflicting metrics leap simultaneously in the same direction, operating flush against the objective physical baseline limit and converging uniquely to the global optimum within the current boundary. Finally, we examine the significance of this law for human cognitive elevation and engineering work, and explain why reductionist physics, game theory, and classical operations research missed this law. Keywords: The Law of Cognitive Cancellation; Cognitive Vector Cancellation; Walk-Through Equals Optimality; Orthogonal Convergence; Hard and Soft Constraint Stratification; Open Complex Giant Systems; Pseudo Trade-off; Multi-Agent Deadlock
Author: meng, grit
Language: English
Field: Decision Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225412259