Continuity Preservation Through Traversal Reduction

This paper develops a structural account of communication as the management of traversal resistance between cognitive systems. It defines traversal resistance as the effort required to enter, follow, retain, reconstruct, and continue through a communicated structure. The paper examines how humour, imagery, analogy, pacing, grounded examples, symbolic compression, and progressive layering can reduce traversal resistance without destroying structural depth. It introduces continuity-preserving decompression and structural re-expansion as methods for making complex structures more navigable while preserving their essential relations. Its central proposition is: Communication succeeds when it reduces traversal resistance without destroying structural depth. The framework is structural, phenomenological, interpretive, and non-clinical.