Sensemaking Debt
How Unrecovered Interpretive Obligations Accumulate in Adaptive Systems

Jan Windahl & Dennis Johansson
FlowSentience Research Paper No. 1 · Version 1.3 · 11 September 2026

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22709413

Abstract

Organisations can have extensive information and still struggle to understand how their decisions affect one another. This paper proposes Sensemaking Debt as a way to investigate what happens when the work needed to resolve consequential differences is repeatedly postponed and begins to restrict later action. The proposed condition is latent: it must be inferred from evidence about organisational history. It is path-dependent: earlier responses influence what can be understood and changed later. A momentary Sensemaking Gap is distinguished from this accumulated condition.

The argument develops sufficiently shared understanding as the connection among different perspectives needed for coordinated action. It does not require consensus or identical expertise. State, epistemic and intent continuity describe the capacity to reconstruct how an arrangement emerged, what evidence and uncertainty informed it, and which purpose it served. A sensemaking perimeter follows consequential relationships across formal organisational boundaries.

Artificial intelligence can increase both the need for interpretation and the ability to renew it. Recursive self-improvement sharpens this relationship when improvements also strengthen the system's ability to produce further improvements. Changes may then affect the activity being governed and the means used to evaluate it. The report distinguishes demonstrated, bounded self-modification from speculation about unrestricted acceleration. It proposes that improvement should be examined through the continuity and capacity for correction that it preserves, alongside its immediate performance.

A separate valuation extension compares the consequences of earlier, delayed and absent action. Climate change illustrates why an organisation's business case can differ from the value across institutions and generations. An educational extension asks whether repeatedly displaced learning opportunities can constrain later understanding; PISA is contextual evidence, not a measure of the proposed debt. Neither extension validates the organisational construct. Longitudinal comparisons must establish whether it explains accumulated constraints better than existing theories, including cases where AI or organisational change restores understanding.

Keywords: Sensemaking Debt; collective understanding; adaptive systems; organisational continuity; recursive self-improvement; intertemporal valuation; human-AI systems; capability formation