AIM Framework glossary
Humanisation Null Hypothesis
Canonical definition
Humanisation Null Hypothesis (HNH). The Humanisation Null Hypothesis is the architectural result that the phenomenon conventionally labelled dehumanisation is not a subtraction from a prior humanised state but a reclassification within the species-general Agent-Type taxonomy (Predator, Prey, Collaborator, Rival), and that the conventional framing mislocates the architectural event because it presupposes a humanisation operation that was never performed. Moral consideration is not a binary output of the classifier but a four-profile output, with each Agent-Type carrying its own reciprocity structure and its own morally-loaded phenomenology: Collaborator classification generates reciprocity-of-cooperation, Rival classification generates reciprocity-of-contest, Predator classification generates reciprocity-of-threat-response, and Prey classification generates reciprocity-of-extraction. Reclassification across the four profiles produces the phenomenology conventionally described as dehumanisation because the moral content of one profile is typically incompatible with the moral content of another, not because moral consideration has been removed. No humanisation layer is stripped, because no humanisation layer was architecturally present. Framework-Specific Principle. Derived from the Individual-as-Object Principle, Axioms 2, 3, 9, SNPP, and the Agent-Type taxonomy.
Explanation
Dehumanisation is easy because humanisation never happened. Your brain does not run a humanity-recognition circuit that propaganda or conflict switches off. It runs a Predator-Prey-Collaborator-Rival classifier, and what changes under propaganda is which of the four categories the classifier assigns to the out-group. Each of the four categories comes with its own moral profile built in. Collaborators are owed cooperation, Rivals are owed honourable contest, Predators are met with defensive force under specific restraints, and Prey are processed under extraction ethics (clean kills, stewardship duties, prohibitions on wastefulness and gratuitous cruelty). When the classification shifts, the moral profile shifts. What we retrospectively call moral consideration is not a single layer that gets stripped. It is a four-way architectural output whose content changes with the classification, and the reclassification is cheap because the classifier is designed for rapid reassignment on behavioural evidence. This is why dehumanisation under propaganda is fast and rehumanisation after conflict is slow: reclassification toward Predator or Prey errs on the side of false positives by evolutionary design, while reclassification back toward Collaborator or Rival requires sustained behavioural evidence accumulated under Source Opacity conditions.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Principle.