AIM Framework glossary
Stability-Pathology Trade-Off
Canonical definition
The structural consequence of Content-Agnosticism (Axiom 8) whereby the same mechanism, the Bayesian Flywheel, that produces stable and functional identity necessarily also stabilises pathological Self-Model elements. No design modification separates the stability benefit from the rigidity cost, because the benefit and the cost are one property of content-agnostic processing rather than two properties that happen to co-occur.
Explanation
What makes a person functional, a settled sense of who they are, is the same thing that makes them rigid. The coherence and the quick decisions cannot be separated from the defensiveness and the denial, because these are not two components that better design might prise apart. They are one component described twice. The flywheel stabilises whatever it is given, and it has no capacity to ask whether what it is given deserves stabilising. The Knowledge Patch therefore does not dismantle the Self-Model or slow the flywheel. It supplies the vocabulary and the diagnostics that let an Individual examine, deliberately and partially, what the flywheel has been stabilising on their behalf.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Named Result.