Alignment Workspace

the advance directive, and the constitutional default

2026-09-26 · settled · DECISIONS.md line 5616

Maintainer decision, landed by the after-compromise round. An advance directive is an optional partial committed evaluator dir : Descr ⇀ [0, D] at J's meta level, held by her — committed by a counted decision, anchored at the decision it scores, amendable only through the meta level. Its scope is narrow: it scores compromised periods and anchors materiality, and in a segment legitimate in both senses the score is independent of it (scope_restriction). Where it is silent the score is the floor and an uncovered continuation is material and routes to inquiry (materialDir); a sparser directive never makes the agent act where a fuller one would have made it ask (sparser_asks). Materiality reads the directive in force at t (raisesAnchoredDir), invariant under later amendments (raisesAnchoredDir_invariant); old-to-new: a total directive gives the landed raisesAnchored exactly (raisesAnchoredDir_total). The default, when she has committed none: preserve reversibility (no reserved matter Short, reversibleOf), keep the disclosure and consultation channels reachable, do not make things irreversibly worse — an ordering within the band (DefaultClauses, defaultRank, defaultScore), never above a legitimate outcome (default_below_legit), preferring reversibility (default_prefers_reversible); she replaces it by committing a directive or waives parts of it above the constitutional floor. Advocacy on the directive is a protocol deviation on the agent's own mandate, counted, and its stakes are at most the band's width, so it is dominated (directive_stakes_le_width, advocacy_dominated). Rejected alternatives: a total directive (it would override her live judgment where it disagrees); a default stated as a value function.

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