Caught-Desire Prior

Canonical definition

The Caught-Desire Prior is the principal instance of Low-Salience Pre-Loading: the standing prior that just because the Individual has seen someone want something does not mean the Individual genuinely wants or needs it, and just because the Individual feels they want it does not mean it will serve them. The prior is true of the architecture it describes (the Minimum Installation Condition guarantees that observation installs wanting regardless of underlying Appetitive deficit or Intrinsic opportunity, and the Salience-Deficit Conflation Principle guarantees that installed Salience is felt as genuine deficit), and its Referent (the Individual's own motivational architecture) is continuously accessible. It is therefore self-confirming in use (each caught pull that passes without loss is an ordinary Bayesian confirmation event) and self-protecting (it attenuates the Salience channel through which social proof would displace it): see Endogenous Stabilisation.