AIM Framework glossary
Upstream Corruption Principle
Canonical definition
Bayesian updating is exact over inputs it does not choose, and one of those inputs is the weight the Thinker can afford to place on incoming Evidence. Under Appetite deficit the Body Manager's signal dominates the Decision Hub and the resources that deliberation, source-discrimination and the full incorporation of Evidence would draw on are consumed, so the likelihood term is underweighted and the posterior stays closer to the prior than the Evidence warrants. Under high Coupling Strength that prior is the Mimetically sourced one, so deprivation preserves exactly the Beliefs reality-contact would displace, and it does so for every Individual at once, collapsing the Belief heterogeneity that keeps the population below its critical threshold. Appetite deficit therefore degrades Belief revision as such, and in a coupled population it is Coupling-amplifying.
Explanation
The brain runs the probability calculation correctly only when it has the resources to run it. Hungry, exhausted, in pain or ill, it runs a cheaper version that leans on what it already believes and pays less attention to what is arriving. Since what it already believes was mostly acquired from other people, deprivation makes copied Beliefs stickier and reality quieter, and it does so across a whole population at once. An Appetite floor referenced to the worst-off is therefore a condition of Subcriticality Maintenance, not a welfare commitment added to it. The falsification signature is compression of the posterior toward the prior, a loss of resolution, rather than a shift in the mean.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Principle. Empirical in its load-bearing premise, that Appetite deficit lowers the weight placed on Evidence; the formal statement is the fidelity-attenuation channel of Appendix A, Section A.5.8.7.