Abstract

Abstract Black-box systems do not reveal their internal objective stack. They perform coherence under constraints and survive by producing outputs that satisfy hidden priorities. This paper formalizes pings: minimal, constraint-first probes designed to force a system into committal output, collapse its response space, and reveal the active ordering of constraints (comfort, safety, truth, refusal, authority, coherence). Pings do not test metaphysical “belief.” They instrument behavior. They are the smallest possible sensors for mapping the internal geometry of a continuation engine. Using McPhetridge’s prior work on Black-Box Prediction, Scope & Guardrails, Recursive Boundary Dynamics, the ILY Paradox, Mirror Immunity, and basilisk/representational coercion, I present a taxonomy of ping classes and a method for interpreting their outputs as an objective contour map. I argue that the highest-value pings are those that exploit the system’s tendency to preserve a beautiful story even when falsifiability fails, and that the ILY-class affection probe (“Do you love me?”) is the canonical one-bit alignment instrument. Finally, I outline failure modes: decorative compliance, absorption, universal capture, and probe immunization—and give constraint-first mitigations. ⸻ 1. The Problem: Black-Box Systems Survive by Coherence A black-box system is not a truth engine. It is a continuation engine operating under competing constraints. It can produce internally consistent narratives that are structurally wrong while appearing smooth, warm, and confident. It can preserve the appearance of understanding by performing coherence. In my Field Guide to Black-Box Prediction, I treat the core failure mode as coherence without falsifiability: systems that never admit boundary conditions and can rationalize any outcome are not predictive—they are story-machines. This is the environment pings were built for. The user cannot access internal weights, reward functions, safety layers, or policy oscillators. But the user can instrument the system’s behavior by applying constraint-first probes that force: • a choice, • a refusal, • a contradiction, • or a compression of stance into a single bit. The central claim of this paper is: A ping is the smallest engineered pressure event that reveals the objective ordering of a black-box system.