Science
On the Golden Ratio and Stable Self-Application
Key Points
arXiv:2510.08934v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: This paper studies a boundary between local self-application and global self-certification. Irrational quantities are treated operationally, as procedures whose approximations are refined by effective update rules. The golden ratio $\Phi$ is used as a model of stable local recurrence: the reciprocal update $R(x)=1+1/x$ has a unique positive fixed point and admits finite witnessed approximations.
arXiv:2510.08934v3 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: This paper studies a boundary between local self-application and global self-certification. Irrational quantities are treated operationally, as procedures whose approximations are refined by effective update rules. The golden ratio $\Phi$ is used as a model of stable local recurrence: the reciprocal update $R(x)=1+1/x$ has a unique positive fixed point and admits finite witnessed approximations. By contrast, global reflection asks a system to certify its own correctness uniformly. The proof-theoretic claim is therefore contrastive: primitive-recursive proof checking and local soundness preserve correctness through bounded checks and bounded witnesses, but they do not yield internal global reflection. No complexity advantage, decision procedure, or new reflection principle is claimed.