AIM Framework glossary
Three-Test Battery
Canonical definition
The Three-Test Battery is the three-part rebuttal standard that a Grievance Belief must satisfy before it is held tractable: (1) Immediacy Test, the identified Individuals must be literally and immediately blocking the Individual's access to bodily needs (Appetites); (2) Mechanism Test, a clear, specific, and attributable causal mechanism connecting the Individuals' actions to the stated harm must be identifiable; (3) Authorship Test, the identified Individuals must have personally designed and intentionally built the blocking system, not merely inherited, participated in, or benefited from it. All three tests must be satisfied for the attribution to survive scrutiny. The Three-Test Battery is applied after the Grievance Gateway has confirmed the grievance is genuinely the Individual's own (Origin Check) and non-Mimetically motivated (A-Check or I-Check).
Explanation
The Three-Test Battery operationalises the Presumption Against Scapegoating at the level of a specific causal attribution. The Presumption does not deny that Individuals cause harm; it demands that the structural conditions for tractable attribution be met before high-intensity blame is issued. Immediacy protects against metaphorical or distal harm claims. Mechanism protects against pattern-recognition-without-causation (correlation confused for agency). Authorship protects against punishing individuals for structural outputs they did not design. Because Confabulation reliably produces agent-based causal narratives even when the causal structure is systemic, the Three-Test Battery is a deliberate friction device: it slows attribution down to the speed at which the Mechanism condition can actually be verified. The battery is most diagnostic in conflict situations where reciprocal scapegoating is active, because both sides will typically fail the Authorship and Mechanism tests even when the Immediacy condition is locally satisfied. Passing the Three-Test Battery establishes authorship and nothing beyond it. It fixes the agent as the gate on the Object, which directs reparation and prevention of recurrence at that gate; it does not license punishment, which the Practical Redirect excludes whether the Three-Test Battery passes or fails.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Operational Standard.
Derivation
Chapter 11, Sections 11.18 and 11.22; Chapter 18, Section 18.9.4.
Related terms
- Grievance Belief
- Presumption Against Scapegoating
- Grievance Gateway
- Scapegoat Mechanism
- Confabulation
- Agent-Based Causal Default
- Immediacy Test
- Mechanism Test
- Authorship Test
- Two-Question Diagnostic
- Sincerity Guarantee
- Knowledge Patch