AIM Framework glossary
Buffer-Depletion Acceleration Principle
Canonical definition
Decoherence Time, the time to crisis, is proportional to A-I Buffer depth at the point where M-dynamics commence intensification. Post-crisis settlements that deplete the defeated party's A-I infrastructure therefore accelerate re-entry into the crisis trajectory in proportion to the depletion, while settlements that rebuild that infrastructure extend Decoherence Time and supply the temporal space within which M-management institutions can develop. Where depletion is accompanied by an increase in Coupling Strength, through humiliation, Status-wounding, or imposed grievance, the two effects compress Decoherence Time from both directions.
Explanation
How a war ends determines how soon the next one starts, and the framework makes that claim quantitative rather than moral. A society's A-I Buffer, the material and institutional depth that lets it absorb Mimetic Premium extraction without cascading, is what buys time. Strip the Buffer and the time shortens. Humiliate as well as strip, and the coupling rises at the same moment the Buffer falls, so the compression comes from both sides at once. Versailles and the Marshall Plan are the same architecture run in opposite directions, twenty-eight years apart, with results that were not a matter of national character. At the level of Belief the Buffer-Depletion Acceleration Principle has a second reading: a polity holding Beliefs against Referents the world has already contradicted is running a debt, and Buffer depth is how long that debt can be deferred before the Belief collides with reality at crisis scale. Buffer maintenance is therefore Decoherence Time management, the provision of enough absorptive capacity that Beliefs can update against their Referents instead of colliding with them.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Principle.
Derivation
Chapter 17, Section 17.17.2, with the Belief-level reading developed in the same section against Referent Abandonment (Chapter 14, Section 14.8.3.2).