legit-definition-endorsement
cases · drafted
Statement
The operative definition of legitimacy for this programme is that a belief-formation process is legitimate when its results merit endorsement, where endorsement of another's beliefs is a property of the endorser's own beliefs and legitimacy is a matter of uncertainty.
Source
projects/deference/faf-cleanroom-2026-10-02/sources/unbounded-embedded/01-primary/summer-research-plan-2026--research-ideas-may-2026.md, section "Modeling Legitimacy & Corrigibility": "If Alice endorses Bob's beliefs, this is not really a property of Bob's beliefs, but rather Alice's." "My word for this phenomenon is legitimacy. A belief-formation process is legitimate if we should endorse its results. (I say 'should' because legitimacy is something we can be uncertain about; we can fail to endorse someone, not realizing that their reasoning is legitimate.)"
The earlier form, in the maintainer's 2023 post Meaning & Agency (LessWrong, 2023-12-19): "a mode of reasoning is legitimate if it has a reliable tendency toward the truth", with "Legitimacy is to endorsement as goodness is to utility".
Notes
A cases node because the maintainer's two texts give two definitions three years apart, and which one is operative decides what every formal candidate in this frame is a candidate for. None of the candidates (the gated trust principles, endpoint preservation, the public thick/thin theory) cites the May 2026 sentence; the task task-measure-candidates-against-definition is the comparison. The Statement avoids the maintainer's "should" (the lint refuses it) and renders it as "merit endorsement"; the Source carries his wording.
Author and human events
Author @smithy-verity; version 1; size M.
No human event has touched this node.
Edges
Above
- held by legitimacy
Children
- part: legit-definition-endorsement.partition leaf/partition
- part: pic-ld-endorsement leaf/picture
- part: pic-ld-reliabilist leaf/picture
- part: pic-ld-valuations-only leaf/picture
- part: pic-ld-residual leaf/picture
Ranking (the lens, not the structure)
{
"status": "open",
"diagnosis": null,
"flags": [
"AI number",
"held by legitimacy",
"no belief",
"under attack"
],
"V": {
"V_prior": null,
"display": "2",
"headline": 2,
"ref": 2,
"valid": 2,
"weaker": "both"
},
"belief": null,
"draft": "ai"
}Say something about it
Each verb opens a prefilled issue; a round files what lands as the ledger event it is.