Have you ever noticed the moment when coherence still didn’t come together, but the action already happened — without a beginning, without a decision, without an explicit step?
You seem to have caught the passing meaning, with the edge of consciousness, by an echelon, but you didn’t bring it to form. And into this gap the brain instantly pulled out its favorite trick: “we’ll figure it out later”.
It is exactly here that the nastiest twist is hidden.
There will be no “later” anymore.
It has already happened. Not because you chose, but because you allowed it. While you were standing there, wrapping doubt around yourself, the system closed the transition without your participation. Meaning passed in transit, without becoming a direction, and the action happened without you as a subject.
This is not a mistake and not a weakness. This is a non-causal malfunction: irreversibility arises not after the decision, but before it.
Unusual? Yes.
Non-causal? Yes.
But honest and without curtsies.
I want to consider 3 concrete examples in which I will show the direct relation of the ontology of Will to everyday invariants that will better help to understand the meaning of Navigational Cybernetics 2.5. The first example is very simple, possibly having happened to you not so long ago or having a probability to happen in the near future. And, I’ll tell you a secret, the memory of what you will read here will work as an anchor and will allow you to make a decision before the наступление of inevitability.
A person agrees to cover for a colleague. Not out of fear, not out of benefit, not out of pressure. Just because “seems like I can”. Because the situation does not seem critical, the request sounds reasonable, and refusal is awkward. In this moment he does not lie either to himself or to the other. He really is able to imagine how he will go out on someone else’s shift. In his head there is a picture: the day will be rearranged, plans will somehow shift, the load will be tolerable.
But here the key substitution happens. Possibility imperceptibly turns into obligation.
In fact he has things to do, plans, internal limitations, which have not yet been assembled into a whole picture. Not because he does not know them, but because they have not yet been lived as a single condition. His system has not yet stabilized the answer to the question: what this shift will cost not today abstractly, but tomorrow concretely. Nevertheless the admissibility has already been issued. The door is already considered open.
After a few days the obvious becomes clear. Everything starts to conflict at once. Work overlaps with fatigue, fatigue with irritation, irritation with a sense of duty. A feeling of a trap arises, although formally no one forced him. And here usually a false explanation appears: “I didn’t calculate”, “I overestimated myself”, “I should have said no right away”.
But the problem is not in calculation and not in the courage of refusal.
The problem is that will did not turn on at all.
Will should have worked not in the form of forbidding the action, but in the form of holding back the admissibility. Not to say “no”, but to say “I still do not allow this to become an obligation”. Not to block help, but not to allow help to turn into a fixation ahead of time. Here will is not effort and not character. This is an architectural layer that separates possibility from authorization.
A person could honestly say: “I can theoretically, but I don’t know what this will do to the rest of the structure of my life”. This is not weakness and not an уход from responsibility. This is an accurate description of the ontological state of the system. But culture perceives such a statement as uncertainty, although in fact this is exactly the work of will.
As a result, the obligation arises earlier than stable understanding of the conditions in which it must live appears. Irreversibility begins not with a heavy price, but with an imperceptible narrowing of the future. After agreement you can no longer just “change your mind” without losses. The space of admissible continuations is reduced.
This is exactly where will should have been. Not in order to endure the shift. And not in order to refuse. But in order not to allow premature binding of the future. This is the negative manifestation of Will — as its absence. Not because the person is weak, but because in the system there was no layer that knows how to say not “no”, but “not yet now”. And it is exactly here that it becomes visible that the problem is not in the specific shift and not in everyday inconvenience. This was only the first, the softest example of the same malfunction.
Because the exact same mechanism works not only in actions, but also in thinking.
A person understands something. Not superficially, but truly. He sorts out the situation, sees the structure, catches causality. He understands why another person behaves like this and not otherwise. Or why the system works exactly like this. Or why the “correct” decision is obvious. And at this moment the same substitution happens, only more dangerous: understanding begins to be perceived as authorization.
If I understood — it means I can.
If I can — it means I have the right to act.
But between these steps Will is again absent.
Here there is no promise, no external request, no social pressure. Everything happens inside. The thought reaches clarity — and immediately passes into fixation. Into action, into intervention, into change. The system does not ask itself whether it is admissible to turn this understanding into an irreversible step. It considers that the very fact of understanding is already an admissibility.
This is especially well seen in situations where a person “knows how it will be better”. He begins to rebuild processes, relationships, strategies, because he sees them from the inside. He does not act out of злой intent. On the contrary, he acts out of rationality. But exactly here intelligence becomes an accelerator of destruction, because between reconstruction and authorization there is no boundary.
And again the problem is not in an error of assessment.
The problem is in the ontological mixing of levels: assessment substitutes admissibility.
In ONTOΣ V this is formulated harshly and coldly: existing systems proceed from the assumption that if something can be assessed, modeled, or comprehended, then it can be authorized for fixation. Under irreversibility this assumption breaks. Because each action flowing out of “I understood” narrows the space of the future — often without the possibility of rollback.
And here will should have manifested already not as social holding back, but as intellectual.
Will here is the ability not to allow a thought to become an action, even when it is clear, logical, and convincing. Not because it is incorrect, but because the system is not yet ready to make it irreversible. Will here is a prohibition not on thinking, but on turning thinking into authorization.
This is extremely non-intuitive, because culture encourages the opposite. We are taught: understood — act, realized — change, saw a problem — fix it. But exactly this is how systems enter the mode of premature fixation. They begin to live not long, but fast. And fast they narrow their future.
If in the first example the obligation arose out of politeness and haste, then here it arises out of intellect. But architecturally it is one and the same malfunction: the absence of a layer that says not “I don’t want”, but “I do not authorize this to become obligatory”.
In both cases, will should have manifested before the action. Not as resistance, not as character, not as effort, but as the holding of admissibility. As a pause between possibility and authorization. As a refusal to issue an ontological pass ahead of time.
And the higher the level of the system — the more understanding, reflection, and intelligence it contains — the more destructive this malfunction becomes. Because intelligence without will does not make a system stable. It makes it fragile. And it is precisely here that it becomes clear that the problem is not in the specific shift and not in everyday inconvenience. This was only the first, the softest example of the same malfunction.
Because exactly the same mechanism triggers not only in actions, but also in thinking.
A person understands something. Not superficially, but truly. He analyzes the situation, sees the structure, catches causality. He understands why another person behaves this way and not otherwise. Or why the system works exactly like this. Or why the “correct” decision is obvious. And at this moment the same substitution happens, only more dangerous: understanding begins to be perceived as authorization.
If I understood — it means I can. If I can — it means I have the right to act.
But between these steps, Will is again absent.
There is no promise here, no external request, no social pressure. Everything happens inside. The thought reaches clarity — and immediately moves into fixation. Into action, into intervention, into change. The system does not ask itself whether it is admissible to turn this understanding into an irreversible step. It assumes that the very fact of understanding already constitutes admissibility.
This is especially visible in situations where a person “knows how it will be better”. He begins to restructure processes, relationships, strategies, because he sees them from the inside. He does not act out of malicious intent. On the contrary, he acts out of rationality. But it is precisely here that intelligence becomes an accelerator of destruction, because there is no boundary between reconstruction and authorization.
And again, the problem is not an error of assessment.
The problem is ontological mixing of levels: assessment substitutes admissibility.
In ONTOΣ V this is formulated harshly and coldly: existing systems proceed from the assumption that if something can be assessed, modeled, or comprehended, then it can be authorized for fixation. Under irreversibility, this assumption breaks down. Because every action flowing from “I understood” narrows the space of the future — often without the possibility of rollback.
And here will should have manifested no longer as social restraint, but as intellectual.
Will here is the ability not to allow a thought to become an action, even when it is clear, logical, and convincing. Not because it is incorrect, but because the system is not yet ready to make it irreversible. Will here is a prohibition not on thinking, but on turning thinking into authorization.
This is extremely non-intuitive, because culture encourages the opposite. We are taught: understood — act, realized — change, saw a problem — fix it. But this is exactly how systems enter a mode of premature fixation. They begin to live not long, but fast. And they quickly narrow their future.
If in the first example the obligation arose out of politeness and haste, then here it arises out of intellect. But architecturally it is the same malfunction: the absence of a layer that says not “I don’t want”, but “I do not authorize this to become obligatory”.
In both cases, will should have manifested before the action. Not as resistance, not as character, not as effort, but as the holding of admissibility. As a pause between possibility and authorization. As a refusal to issue an ontological pass ahead of time.
And the higher the level of the system — the more understanding, reflection, and intelligence it contains — the more destructive this malfunction becomes. Because intelligence without will does not make a system stable. It also makes it fragile. And that is precisely why the third example begins already after.
After the door has been opened, the obligation has been accepted, the action has been performed and returning the system to its initial state is impossible.
Here it no longer makes sense to say “should have done it earlier”. Earlier no longer exists as an operational category.
The person has already broken down, made a mistake, destroyed something, lost something, gone the wrong way, taken on what he cannot carry, or allowed an intellectual action to narrow the future more than expected. The regime is broken. Identity has cracked. Old explanations no longer work, because they belonged to a different state of the system.
And it is here that the second, heavier mistake is usually made.
The system begins to look for a better solution: to fix, to compensate, to “do it right” immediately for the future and to regain control.
But this is already impossible. Because irreversibility is not a “big price”. It is the loss of future admissible structure. Some continuations no longer exist. Some trajectories are closed forever. And any attempt to act as if they are still available only accelerates collapse.
In this regime, will can no longer manifest as holding admissibility — admissibility has already been issued, and the system lives with its consequences. But will is still possible. Just in a different form.
Here Will is not a choice between options, but a restriction of the direction of recovery.
A person cannot choose “as before”. He can choose only in which direction not to go further. He can prohibit certain forms of compensation from becoming the new norm. For example: not allowing cynicism to become a stable style, not allowing justification to fix itself as identity, not allowing short-term relief to become a long-term strategy.
This is the most difficult form of will, because it does not give a feeling of strength. It does not create a sense of “I handled it”. It looks like a loss of possibilities, like a voluntary narrowing of an already narrowed future. But this is exactly where it works.
At this moment, will is not the ability to do something, but the ability not to allow recovery to go along a destructive trajectory, even if it is the most accessible, the fastest, and the most psychologically comfortable.
And if in the first example will did not work as “not yet”, in the second — as “I understood, but I did not authorize”, then here it manifests as “I can no longer return, but I will not go this way”.
This is the point where it becomes clear that will is not equal to control and not equal to choice. Will is an operator of direction, not optimization. It does not seek the best outcome. It does not save the system. It simply does not allow it to finally turn into a dead end.
And now all three examples converge into one point.
Irreversibility is described not as a “big price”, but as the loss of future admissible structure. Every obligation, every action, every fixation narrows the space of possible continuation. Therefore any attempts to “tune the system so that it lives long and happily” are a knowingly dead-end branch, in whatever direction they go.
Long-living systems do not optimize happiness and do not guarantee correctness. They architecturally work with admissibilities.
Will, in this optic, is not strength of character and not a moral virtue. It is a layer that either does not allow premature irreversibility, or, when it has already occurred, holds the direction of recovery within the bounds of what can still exist.
And if this layer is not embedded in advance, its place is taken by the environment.
Always.
This text is a philosophical interpretation of ONTOΣ 5; the original version has a strictly mathematical structure and is hosted in an open GitHub repository (the link is provided in the comments to this work). For readers: the DOI for the original mathematical version is temporarily unavailable due to technical reasons on the repository side (automatic protection) and will be restored later.
MxBv, Poznań 2026.