AIM Framework glossary
Reference Set
Canonical definition
The Reference Set is the set of Individuals, together with the Objects and standing they hold, against which the Observer computes an Individual's comparative position and hence the Mimetic valuation of Objects. The composition of the Reference Set is among the Thinker's priors about the Observer, alongside the identification of which Individuals count as Models and the comparative-position templates under which the Observer computes. The Reference Set is not fixed: its upward-comparable subset changes on every acquisition, occupancy or loss event as the Individual's standing moves, which is the Reference-Set Reset, and the extent of the Reference Set is set by what the Individual can observe, from the band of known others in the ancestral environment to the visible highlights of a global population.
Explanation
The Reference Set is the crowd a person measures themselves against without noticing: the colleagues, neighbours, rivals and public figures whose possessions and standing fix what counts as being ahead or behind. Nobody chooses who is in the Reference Set, and its membership keeps changing. Each step up brings people who were previously out of reach into range, and a phone brings millions of curated lives into it at once, which is why someone is always visibly ahead.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Construct.
Derivation
Chapter 8, Section 8.5.2; the composition of the Reference Set as a Thinker prior about the Observer at Chapter 4, Section 4.4.3.
Also in the entry
Distinction from Anchoring Object. An Anchoring Object is a single high-salience Object in which a field's Mimetic Premium has concentrated, so that every actor in the field computes Status against the Anchoring Object. The Reference Set is the comparison set each Individual computes against; an Anchoring Object is the case in which one reference point dominates the Reference Sets of a whole field.