The Conditions for an Inside

This is the triad the book uses to separate systems that have an inside from systems that only process. Boundary is a maintained self/world distinction; stakes are something at risk in how things go; temporal integration is the binding of successive moments into one perspective. The pivotal move is that these are not three equal gates. Sufficient temporal integration is what produces a momentary inside at all; boundary and stakes thicken and stabilize it but do not, by themselves, create it. That is why a weather model can bind enormous data and reach no inside, while the question of where a current AI system falls stays open.