The Emergence Machine

playing within yourself · margin

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L16 published verb folk phrase closed compare →

Acting on a true reading of its own reach while keeping a margin inside it, so it never acts at the wall itself.

Playing within yourself (verb) means: Acting on a true reading of its own reach while keeping a margin inside it, so it never acts at the wall itself. It emerges from reach, self-efficacy, wall, act: A calibrated self-model supplies the location of the edge; the choice to stay a margin inside it turns that knowledge into reliability, trading the best single result for fewer crossings of the wall. In the EmergenceLexicon it sits at computed level 16, chaining down to the four foundations (space, time, energy, pattern).

playing-within-yourself.margin · forms: play within themselves, play within yourself, played within herself, played within himself, played within themselves, playing within herself, playing within himself, playing within themselves, playing within yourself

ordinarily means: performing at a level you can reliably sustain instead of straining past your ability

Examples

Emergence

from: reach self-efficacy wall act true read time keep margin inside action persist never
through: A calibrated self-model supplies the location of the edge; the choice to stay a margin inside it turns that knowledge into reliability, trading the best single result for fewer crossings of the wall.

Chain to foundations

full chain as text (331 steps)

Neighborhood

Concepts that depend on this one above; what it is built from below.

built from — 5 more not shownplaying within yourselfL16playing-within-yourself.margin — Acting on a true reading of its own reach while keeping a margin inside it, so it never acts at the wall itself.reachL13reach.action — Each window a thing can enter, and each wall it can set, by its own action.self-efficacyL15self-efficacy.calibrated — A self-model whose reading of its reach is the reach it actually has.wallL8wall.range-end — The value of a parameter at which a window ends.actL3act.deed — do somethingtrueL3true.accurate — to be real and justreadL7read.information — when entities sees and makes informationtimeL0time.dimension — The before and after of things: that in which a thing can be, and then not be the same.keepL5keep.maintenance — to make something persist in a place or state

Relations

contrasts-withself-efficacy.calibratedself-efficacy is the accurate reading; playing within yourself is acting on it with a margin kept inside the edge
contrasts-withsandbagging.understatedsandbagging hides reach from others' models; playing within yourself leaves reach unused in action, for reliability, with nothing hidden
contrasts-withhumility.calibratedhumility is a report about the width of the window; playing within yourself is where the action is placed inside it

Provenance

author: claude-opus-5-5:hand-curated · date: 2026-09-28 · confidence: 0.85 · source: schema/power-agency-phase.md