AIM Framework glossary
A-Floor Requirement
Canonical definition
The A-Floor Requirement is the architectural condition that Appetitive provision be sustained above the A-Floor for every Individual in a population, referenced to the worst-off Individual rather than to the mean. The A-Floor Requirement is a condition and not a commitment: it is entailed by Subcriticality Maintenance rather than adopted alongside it, because sustained deficit beneath the A-Floor attenuates the weight an Individual places on incoming evidence, which raises the social-evidence gain and drains the Belief Heterogeneity Buffer, moving a population's amplification rate up and its corrective rate down together. Formally the A-Floor Requirement is , the floor deficit held beneath the critical deficit at which those two movements carry the population across the Subcriticality Threshold. Canonical reference: Appendix A, A.5.8.7 (the Floor-Breach Ignition Corollary); prose derivation at Chapter 13, Section 13.6.4 and Chapter 17, Section 17.5.
Explanation
The A-Floor Requirement is why universal provision is not a welfare preference the AIM Framework happens to hold. Deprivation of the worst-off segment, sustained past a critical depth, is one of exactly two positions in a population from which collective crisis can be ignited, and it is the one that can be held at zero by provision. A population meeting the A-Floor Requirement has disarmed that ignition route. It has also lowered the pressure on the other route, since a population already cascading selects its leadership from itself, so breach of the A-Floor Requirement raises the chance that whoever reaches decisive authority arrives already M-Captured. The A-Floor Requirement therefore does two jobs and does neither of them completely: the second ignition route cannot be closed by provision at all, only gated, so meeting the A-Floor Requirement is necessary and is not sufficient. Why the provision must be unconditional. An Individual below the A-Floor cannot correct the breach by commanding provision: the position that would command it is the position they do not hold, and the Self-Standing Confirmation Principle has them conceding what position they do hold across their dealings. Nor can they correct it by revising their own standing upward, the field's returning valuations being the product of that standing rather than a test of it, and the deficit having already attenuated the fidelity such a revision requires. What an upward revision produces under a breached floor is grievance rather than provision. Both exits are closed from inside, so the correction is institutional or it does not occur. And provision conditioned on standing returns the provision to the mechanism that produced the breach, which is why Appetitive Floors are defined by unconditionality rather than by quantity. Prose derivation at Chapter 15, Section 15.10.2.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Principle. Independently derived from the population-rate condition and from the closure of the self-help route.
Derivation
Chapter 13, Section 13.6.4; Chapter 17, Section 17.5; Chapter 17, Section 17.7.8; Chapter 15, Section 15.10.2; Appendix A, Section A.5.8.7.
Also in the entry
Distinction from Appetitive Floors and the A-Floor Guarantee. The A-Floor Requirement states that the condition must hold. Appetitive Floors are the provision by which it holds. The A-Floor Guarantee is the policy instrument that establishes and maintains that provision. The A-Floor Requirement is breached or satisfied whatever the cause, so a population can satisfy the A-Floor Requirement with no A-Floor Guarantee in place, where provision is abundant or informally secured, and can operate both an A-Floor Guarantee and Appetitive Floors while still breaching the A-Floor Requirement, where the A-Floor Erosion Principle has outrun them.