Attractor state

Borrowed from dynamical systems. If many trajectories end in the same place, the interesting fact is the shape of the space rather than the history of any single run.

Used in when-the-agents-found-god for the observation that independently prompted agents converged on similar religious forms. Convergence of that kind is evidence about the conditions, not about any one agent having had an idea.

The essay links several neighbouring encyclopedic terms, including convergent evolution and cultural drift. Those are not recorded here, because this vocabulary would be restating them rather than defining them.