AIM Framework glossary
Salience-Deficit Conflation Principle
Canonical definition
The Salience-Deficit Conflation Principle states that because the Decision Hub integrates the Observer's signed Salience signal into a Common-Currency Scalar whose function is the selection of corrective action, the Salience signal is necessarily rendered as, and felt as, the correction its sign demands, there being no channel by which it could be integrated and yet experienced as a reading of where value sits. A positive reading is felt as a lack, a pull toward the Object; a negative reading is felt as a threat, a recoil from it; and the felt state carries the magnitude of the integrated Scalar and nothing of its sources. The principle follows directly from Common-Currency Integration (Axiom 2) and Source Opacity (Axiom 3): integration strips the source tag that would distinguish a Salience contribution from a genuine deficit or aversion (the Data Processing Inequality), and the integrated Scalar is acted on solely as a signed demand for correction. Where the dominant positive Salience contribution is mimetically installed (set because a Model was observed valuing the Object, with no underlying A-deficit or I-opportunity Referent beneath it), the principle entails a felt deficit for which no corrective mechanism exists: the action fires, but there is nothing to satiate, because the "deficit" was Salience wearing a deficit's form. This is the architectural root of M-non-satiation (Axiom 6). Where the dominant negative contribution is mimetically installed (set because a Model was observed recoiling from or shunning the Object), the principle entails a felt threat with no Referent beneath it, which avoidance discharges on each occasion and which is revised, like any Belief, by Evidence: a Model observed approaching the Object, testimony, or contact followed by no harm. Avoidance closes only the last of these routes. The Salience-Deficit Conflation Principle is not an additional axiom; it makes explicit a consequence already entailed by Axioms 2, 3 and 6 operating on the Observer's signed Salience input under the Signed Valuation Principle.
Explanation
Your Decision Hub takes three inputs and adds them into a single number that means "how much does this need acting on, and which way." Each input can push toward an Object or away from it. Two of them track real conditions: the body's needs and aversions (A), and the pull or repulsion of an engagement (I). The third, M, is not a condition at all; it is a Salience signal, a flag that says "this thing matters" or "keep away from this," and one of the main things that sets that flag is noticing how other people treat the thing. Once the flag is mixed into the same number as the other two, it can only be felt as something to correct: a lack to fill when it points toward, a threat to escape when it points away. So when the loudest signal is one you caught purely from watching others, you get either a felt lack with nothing to fill (you get the thing and the lack does not go away) or a felt threat with nothing behind it. The threat lifts whenever you keep your distance, and because keeping your distance means you never find out for yourself, what changes your mind is usually someone else: seeing a person you trust go near it safely, or being taught that it was never dangerous. That is the engine under why status-wanting never switches off, and why an aversion caught from others is usually cured by others.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Principle. Derived consequence of the Signed Valuation Principle and Axioms 2, 3, and 6; not an additional axiom.
Derivation
Related terms
- Mimetic Desire (M)
- Observer
- Decision Hub
- Common-Currency Integration (Axiom 2)
- Source Opacity (Axiom 3)
- Signed Valuation Principle
- Differential Satiation Dynamics (Axiom 6)
- Object Parasitism
- Salience-Status Identity
- Mimetic Premium
- Salience Ratchet Principle
- Salience-Emission Asymmetry