AIM Framework glossary
Soft Falsehood
Canonical definition
A Soft Falsehood is a Belief no live Referent governs but which is held at low Coupling Strength, so that its boundary is permeable, little or no Cost is exported, and it decoheres continuously and cheaply as Individuals shift their Beliefs across it rather than being held in place and made to pay. Like the Hard Falsehood it occurs in two Referent-conditions, Referent-abandoned-but-weakly-held and Referent-free-but-weakly-held, kept as distinct cells because their relationships to the Referent differ and seed different future analysis, even though the present corrective converges in most cases on the same low-coupling permeability that makes reclassification easy.
Explanation
A soft falsehood is a belief that is not tracking reality but that nobody feels strongly enough about to enforce. Because no one is punished for disagreeing, people drift in and out of it freely, and it corrects itself gently over time. A loosely held opinion drawn from something one read, where a fact of the matter may exist but the belief sits lightly either way, is the everyday case.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Construct.