AIM Framework glossary
Decoherence Regimes
Canonical definition
Decoherence Regimes are the five mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive classes into which any single Belief falls according to its relation to a Referent, where the regime determines how that Belief's Decoherence Time is bounded. Decoherence Time is the time to the next decoherence event against the Belief's Referent; Decoherence Time is genuinely unbounded in one regime only. The five regimes are generated by a prior question and three structural questions. The prior question is whether the Belief is settled by a check constitutive of holding it, as the Belief that a result follows from stated premises is settled by its proof; where it is, the Belief is Mathematically Provable (no Referent is consulted, the check being the proof and inseparable from holding the Belief; Decoherence Time floored at the cost of running the proof; whether the premises describe physical reality is a separate Belief, which falls in one of the other four regimes). Where it is not, three structural questions (does a Referent exist; is there an access path to it; and if decoherence is available, does the Belief track it) generate the other four: Aesthetic (no Referent exists; the Belief operates wholly endogenously; Decoherence Time unbounded because no decoherence event is possible); Referent Inaccessible (a Referent exists but no access path yet exists; Decoherence Time bounded by the event that brings the Referent into the Hypothesis Space, though the timing of that event is unknowable in advance); Referent Abandoned (a Referent exists and is accessible, but the Belief has severed its connection to it; Decoherence Time bounded, deferrable, but the fold back to the standing Referent remains inevitable); and Truth-Tracked (a Referent exists, is accessible, decoherence has occurred, and the Belief tracks it; Decoherence Time short and continually renewed, with no collapse pending). The word "unbounded" applies to the Aesthetic regime alone; every other regime has a bounded Decoherence Time.
Explanation
Any single Belief you hold falls into one of five kinds, depending on how it relates to the thing it is about. Either there is nothing real for it to be right or wrong about (aesthetic, taste, fashion); or there is something real but no way yet to check it, so it stays uncorrected until the means of checking arrives; or there is something real and checkable but the Belief has cut itself off from it, so reality will eventually come collect even though it hasn't yet; or the Belief has been checked against reality and tracks it, so it is solid and nothing is pending; or it is the kind of thing you prove, where holding it and checking it are the same act. Only the first kind can drift forever, because only it has nothing to be pulled back to.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Construct.