AIM Framework glossary
Cost-Provenance Test
Canonical definition
The Cost-Provenance Test is the diagnostic that determines which regime of the Hardness–Referent Matrix a Belief occupies by tracing the provenance of the Cost required to maintain it against the pressure to revise it. The Test asks a single question: who bears that Cost. Where the Cost is bounded, borne by the holder, and discharged against reality, the cost of running and replicating a test that consults a live Referent, the Belief is Referent-governed and the hardness is a Hard or Soft Truth. Where the Cost is exported onto those the Belief's boundary excludes, borne by them as real losses in the A-domain and I-domain, the Belief is not Referent-governed and the hardness is a Hard Falsehood, whether Referent-abandoned or Referent-free. M-Harm may be among the coercive instruments used to export that Cost, but Status displacement and other M-ledger hits are not themselves what the Test counts as exported maintenance Cost; only A-domain and I-domain losses enter the ledger. Where no Cost is borne by anyone because no Referent exists to generate a pressure to revise, the Belief lies in the aesthetic regime off the Matrix. The Test is the collective-and-boundary-level counterpart of the Provenance Rule: the Provenance Rule traces the provenance of a Belief's evidence, and the Cost-Provenance Test traces the provenance of a Belief's maintenance Cost, the two closing the diagnostic loop from evidence-in to cost-out.
Explanation
To tell whether a firmly held belief is true or merely enforced, do not look at how confidently it is held, a hard truth and a hard falsehood feel identical. Look instead at who pays to keep it standing. If the only cost is the cost of checking, paid by the person who holds the belief, it is answerable to reality. If the cost is borne by people outside the belief, in lost jobs, denied care, or violence, then reality is not holding it up; coercion is. Follow the money and the harm, and the belief tells you what it is. Shame and standing-attacks can be how the coercion is delivered; the Test still reads the A and I losses that result.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Construct.
Derivation
Chapter 16, Section 16.11.2; Chapter 16, Section 16.11.4.1; Chapter 14, Section 14.8.4.