AIM Framework glossary
A-I Buffer
Canonical definition
The A-I Buffer is the component of a society's social infrastructure that is sustained by Appetite provision and Intrinsic Motivation rather than by Mimetic Premium. It comprises genuine trust, cooperation, mutual aid, shared I-engagement, institutional competence, and the material reserves that represent stored productive capacity. The A-I Buffer is the component that resists cascade dynamics. It supplies value-sources independent of M-amplification (I-domain engagement), and it supplies the material security (A-Floor provision) that reduces susceptibility to M-amplification. Its depth at the point where M-dynamics commence intensification sets Decoherence Time under the Buffer-Depletion Acceleration Principle. Normal social operation depletes the A-I Buffer continuously, through Micro-Extraction Events, and only deliberate institutional design replenishes it.
Explanation
A society's real shock absorber is the part of its social life that does not run on standing: people who trust each other, institutions that work, reserves that exist because something was actually produced. That is what keeps a society steady when status competition heats up. Every unequal encounter draws on it a little, and nothing refills it except building and maintaining the things that do.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Construct.