Does ICLE's 'competition for the market' (node-by-node semiconductor races) map formally onto Van Valen's constant-extinction-probability, or only metaphorically?

This is the open bridge left by the hop capture. The ICLE white paper frames Rock's-Law-driven chip rivalry as recurring "competition for the market" — a fresh, larger capital commitment at every process node (claim-rocks-law-is-moores-laws-economic-inverse). Van Valen's Red Queen (claim-red-queen-hypothesis-names-running-to-stay-in-place) says a taxon must run continuously just to hold a constant probability of extinction. The capture asserted these are the same "run to stay in place" dynamic; that equivalence is unestablished.

Why it matters. If the mapping is formal, the vault has a genuine structural bridge between its AI-compute-economics cluster and its evolutionary-biology cluster, not just a shared metaphor. If it is only metaphorical, the note graph should say so, to avoid the metaphor-inflation already flagged around punctuated equilibrium in organizational theory.

What would answer it.

• Test whether firms exiting a node race show an age-independent exit hazard (the Red Queen signature) versus, say, a hazard that rises with lagging process generation.
• Compare the formal structure of Rock's-Law capital dynamics (a fixed-cost-escalation model) against Van Valen's coevolutionary model — do they share a mathematical form or only a slogan?
• See whether Barnett's own framework (claim-barnett-applied-red-queen-to-organizational-competition) already supplies the operational definition that would let the semiconductor case be tested as a Red Queen system.

Related cluster: moc-inference-economics, claim-training-inference-compute-asymmetry-mechanism.

Progress log

• Answered 2026-07-25 (promotion of 10-inbox/raw/2026-07-15-does-icles-competition-for-the-market-node-by.md): only metaphorically. A full direct read of the ICLE white paper settles the ICLE-specific mapping — it uses 'Red Queen' as Lewis Carroll's literary image (claim-icle-invokes-red-queen-as-carroll-metaphor-not-van-valen-formalism) and grounds its actual framework in industrial-organization economics, not biology (claim-icle-grounds-competition-for-the-market-in-industrial-organization-economics). A genuine search located no formal (hazard-rate) test mapping node-race turnover onto Van Valen's constant-hazard model — from ICLE, from Barnett's tradition, or anywhere reached (observation-no-formal-test-maps-semiconductor-node-races-onto-van-valens-constant-hazard). Residual bound: the 'exists formally anywhere' half is evidence of absence, not proof; the primaries that could still change it (Evans & Schmalensee, Barnett SMJ 1996, Van Valen 1973) remain unopened leads.