AIM Framework glossary
Non-Malice Corollary
Canonical definition
Non-Malice Corollary is the principle that if Confabulation is routine, universal, and sincere (generated by ordinary cognitive architecture operating under Source Opacity, not by deceptive intent), then most conflict involves two (or more) sincere confabulators rather than one truth-teller confronting one deceiver, each party experiences their position as obviously correct, experiences the other's resistance as evidence of bad faith, and cannot recognise that both positions may be confabulated explanations for Mimetically-generated urgency.
Explanation
The Non-Malice Corollary reframes the phenomenology of disagreement. The standard experience, "I am obviously right, and their resistance proves bad faith", is revealed as the signature of Confabulation collision, not as evidence about the other party's intentions. When both parties feel maximally certain, both parties' Confabulation cascades have likely converged. The intensity of disagreement is not proportional to how wrong one party is; it is proportional to how complete both parties' cascades have become and how thoroughly the relevant structural explanations have been excluded from both parties' Hypothesis spaces. This explains the paradox of intractable disputes: the more certain each party feels, the less likely resolution becomes, not because one party is more malicious, but because both parties' self-models have locked in and neither possesses the conceptual vocabulary that would allow them to step outside their confabulated frame. The Non-Malice Corollary does not claim malice never exists (it does), but that assuming malice as explanation for disagreement is itself a confabulation-compatible move that prevents recognition of the structural dynamics generating the conflict.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Corollary, derived from Confabulation architecture and Source Opacity.