Correspondence Corrigibility and Reality Veto

Correspondence, Corrigibility and Reality Veto

Correspondence

Correspondence concerns the quality of the relation among an object, its evidence, its representation and what reality later permits us to retain.

It is not identical to consensus, confidence, institutional approval or agreement with John.

Corrigibility

Corrigibility requires more than admitting abstract fallibility. A corrigible process must retain:

• access to the source object;
• a visible record of the representation;
• identifiable correction conditions;
• authority and ability to revise;
• propagation into later outputs;
• a route for reopening when new evidence appears.

Reality veto

The phrase “Reality has veto power over John” prevents project stewardship from becoming epistemic sovereignty. It also prevents an A.I., institution, majority or critic from acquiring final authority merely by opposing John.

Reality’s veto is approached through evidence, consequences, prediction, comparison, independent access routes and correction—not through a person claiming to speak for reality.

Renewable auditability

An audit should have bounded stopping conditions so work can continue. The stopping condition is not permanent closure. Material new evidence can reopen the object.

bounded audit
→ decision or provisional state
→ continued observation
→ material trigger
→ reopened audit

Related public pages: Unownable, Governance, and Correction Metabolism.