Displaced Correction

Canonical definition

Displaced Correction is the condition in which a Belief diverges from a live and accessible Referent and the cost physical reality imposes falls on Individuals other than the holder, so that no Evidence of the divergence reaches the Individual whose Belief it would revise. The Referent is neither absent nor out of reach: an access path exists and other Individuals are on it. What is displaced is the arrival of the correction, which lands on a different person, commonly at a later time, in another place, and under an attribution naming something else. A Belief in this condition cannot be corrected through contact with its own Referent, because the Evidence reaching the holder is not contact with the Referent, and it can be corrected only by another Individual supplying the Evidence the Referent is delivering elsewhere. This is why the Beliefs that protect a population against such divergences are held collectively rather than individually: a population that shares the Belief supplies the correction continuously and from every direction, before the cost falls on anyone. Distinction from Referent Inaccessibility. In Referent Inaccessibility no access path exists for anyone, the Referent being causally operative but unrepresentable within the available Hypothesis Space, and the remedy is the vocabulary that opens the path. In Displaced Correction the path exists, others are on it, and the holder is not. Distinction from Referent Abandonment. In Referent Abandonment the holder had access to the verdict and severed it. Under Displaced Correction no verdict ever arrives at the holder, so there is nothing for them to defy, and the sincerity of the Belief is undisturbed. Distinction from the Cost of a Belief. The Cost of a Belief is the expenditure required to maintain a Belief against the pressure to revise it, and its exported form is coercion applied to those who would challenge the holder, which is diagnostic of a Belief no live Referent governs. Displaced Correction concerns the consequence of acting on a Belief rather than the cost of holding it, and it is entirely compatible with a live Referent. A holder under Displaced Correction spends nothing maintaining the Belief, because nothing is pressing them to revise it.