From diegesis to domain mastery

Live action role-play (LARP) and other performative simulations are usually treated as imitationsof knowledge. We argue that they are better understood as scaffolds that can, under specifiedconditions, be converted into the real thing. We distinguish diegetic competence performancethat is acceptable inside a fictional frame or to an audience from domain mastery, the capacityto bring about intended outcomes in the world. A small formal model shows that any residualweight on audience approval creates a Goodhart-style incentive to widen the gap betweenappearing and being competent, and that the learning signal about causal structure is proportionalto the weight an environment places on world-checked outcomes. Using Neurath’s boat (ratherthan the Ship of Theseus alone) to describe the gradual replacement of performative componentsby functional ones, we make the resulting sorites-style vagueness tractable by proposing threejointly necessary conditions for crossing from simulated to genuine expertise: environmentalfriction, generative capability, and frame independence. We then advance, and clearly flag asa hypothesis, metacognitive lag: the tendency of learners with performative origins to keepan “actor” self-label after their skill has crossed the thresholds. We review evidence fromsimulation-based training, transfer research, the sociology of expertise, and impostor research;assess where the framework is supported, untested, or contradicted; draw design implicationsfor training; and outline an empirical program for testing it.