Generic Stability Independence and Treeless theories

We initiate a systematic study of \emph{generic stability independence} and introduce the class of \emph{treeless theories} in which this notion of independence is particularly well-behaved. We show that the class of treeless theories contains both binary theories and stable theories and give several applications of the theory of independence for treeless theories. As a corollary, we show that every binary NSOP${}_3$ theory is simple.