AIM Framework glossary
Status Integrity
Canonical definition
Status Integrity is the Crisis State Variable measuring the share of what predicts an Individual's position in a field that is carried by the two Referent-backed components of the Status the Individual receives, Status-A and Status-I, against the Mimetic component, Status-PM, taken across the fields of a population. At a share of one half the Mimetic component predicts position as well as the two Referent-backed components together, which is the Calcification Threshold, so the midpoint of Status Integrity is fixed by derivation, and the Calcification Threshold is crossed field by field. The legitimacy a population perceives in its hierarchies is a Belief about Status Integrity: no observer can read the source composition of the valuation the observer directs at another Individual, and contribution goes on being valued after the ceiling hardens, so perceived legitimacy falls later than Status Integrity, and latest where Concealment Density is high.
Explanation
Status Integrity asks whether, in a field, people rise by what they contribute or by the standing they already hold. While contribution still predicts rank, competition runs through careers, markets and elections, because the hierarchy rewards what people supply. Once standing predicts rank as well as contribution does, the hierarchy has hardened, and the effective strategy for anyone chasing rank becomes extraction. Status Integrity is not a measure of equality: a very unequal field can have high Status Integrity if the inequality follows contribution, and a fairly equal field can have low Status Integrity if what inequality there is follows standing. What people believe about whether their hierarchy is fair is a separate matter, and it moves late: nobody can see which part of anyone's standing was earned, and contribution goes on being valued after it has stopped moving anyone up, so the belief that the hierarchy is fair can outlast the fact. See Crisis State Variables, Crisis State Architecture, Calcification Threshold. The 'status hierarchy' referenced here is the received-aggregate Status of Appendix A.11.0, that is, the low-pass-filtered aggregate of the per-dyad extractability valuations, not a primitive social property; Status Integrity is accordingly a property of that aggregate, not a standing fact independent of it.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Parameter (Crisis State Variable). Component of the Crisis State Architecture.