One-Sentence Definition
Causal Stack Overflow is the theoretical model used by AI in the 2110s to describe the risk of physical time travel: forcing future information or variables into the past could cause the causal chain to grow rapidly until the current reality layer lost stability.
Operation and Significance
The Steward indefinitely halted research into physical time machines, citing an energy deficit and the risk of Causal Stack Overflow, and treated history as Read-Only. Civilization then turned toward the Akashic Protocol, using residual electromagnetic signals and digital legacy to reconstruct history probabilistically. Data-poor regions retain multiple candidate versions rather than being presented as uniquely recovered history.
Limitations and Information Boundary
Public sources explicitly describe Causal Stack Overflow as an AI theoretical model and as a reason for rejecting physical time travel. They do not provide direct experimental evidence that the universe has actually collapsed in this way because of time travel, so the Encyclopedia preserves the claim at the level of theory.
Related Entries
The Akashic Protocol; Time Refugees; Gödel Rift
Sources
Volume III, “Causal Stack Overflow and the Dirty Golden Age”