AIM Framework glossary
Predator
Canonical definition
Predator is an agent-type category in human causal cognition characterising entities that exhibit capability and hostile intent indicators, triggering threat-avoidance systems that evolved to detect dangers requiring defensive response, including environmental hazards, aggressors, competitors, and any agent whose approach behaviour, size, weapons, or posture signals immediate danger to the observer's survival or well-being.
Explanation
Predator-detection operates through intrinsic threat cues rather than relational positioning, a tiger is dangerous regardless of the observer's social network or reciprocity status. The cognitive systems implementing predator-detection compute objective features: capability (size, strength, weapons), hostile intent (approach behaviour, aggressive posture), and urgency (proximity, speed of approach). These are properties of the predator, and the Observer's single positional computation places the Individual against them (Relative-Position Computation Principle): a tiger is dangerous regardless of the observer's social network, but it is dangerous because its capability to inflict physical harm exceeds the Individual's own. Predator-detection systems exhibit asymmetric error costs: false positives (detecting non-existent threats) are metabolically cheaper than false negatives (missing actual threats), producing the hyperactive agency detection pattern that cognitive science documents extensively. In genuine threat scenarios, selection criteria and framing criteria coincide, the agent is targeted because they are threatening, with predator-characteristics triggering predator-detection systems that produce defensive responses calibrated to the actual danger level. (Framework-Specific Construct, drawing on HADD literature)
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Construct.
Derivation
Chapter 10, Section 10.2.2; Chapter 4, Section 4.3.9; Chapter 11, Section 11.13.1; Chapter 4, Section 4.4.7; Chapter 11, Section 11.19.