nucleation

CLAIM-482: An organization's aggregate revealed preference exists exactly when its record of winning moves never cycles, and where it exists it is fitted to one regime of authority, so an intervention on authority that changes the winning moves changes the fitted preference and the preference does not predict the change

3 min read

Properties11
StatusActive
Version2
Rolecounter
Warrantinterpretive
Tagsagency, society-and-governance
Linewill-organization
Rests onCLAIM-434 — On a finite set of outcomes, some function rises with every move that wins one of a negotiation's conflicts exactly when no chain of winning moves returns to where it began, and the length of the longest such chain ending at an outcome is one such function; a perfectly transitive record of which side won each pair, in a complete tournament contesting every pair once, leaves a cyclic share of (n − 2)/3n under the Hodge decomposition, a baseline that does not carry to sparse records; the Hodge gradient can reverse a comparison the wins settle, netting a record erases alternation, a record fixes a class of potentials rather than one, a coherent record is not yet one aligned with any single perspective's ordering, a best-fitting ordering of a cycle is no Lyapunov function, the sign a class of potentials gives can be set-valued, and an ordering fitted to a record overstates its agreement there
GroundsCASE-003 — Northstar-A and Northstar-B: same policy, same evidence, different escalation authority
Objects toCLAIM-089 — Northstar simply prefers speed: the governing relations are revealed preferences of the organization, not a separate organization of efficacy
ComplementsCLAIM-122 — Will-organization is not one more higher-order preference: changing the conditions of efficacy changes behaviour while the competing preferences stay fixed
UsesTERM-077 — ordinal potential: of a negotiation over a finite set of options in a window of time, an ordering of the options that every move winning one of its conflicts climbs; it exists exactly when the wins never cycle, which is ordinal extendibility, that some complete ordering agrees with every win, and not observed comparability, since pairs never contested are not compared; and it is fixed only up to a class: every strictly increasing transform of one is one, and on a sparse record several orderings can be

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The claim

CLAIM-089 is the redescription objection to CLAIM-027, in its aggregate form: “Northstar simply prefers speed”. CLAIM-122 answers the individual-attitude version by holding members’ attitudes fixed and changing authority. It leaves the aggregate version open, because an organization’s revealed preference need not be any member’s attitude.

The record has since proved when an aggregate revealed preference exists. CLAIM-434: on a finite set of outcomes, some ordering rises with every winning move exactly when no chain of winning moves returns to where it began. That ordering is an ordinal potential (TERM-077). A revealed preference of the organization, in the only sense its record of wins can reveal, is such an ordering. So:

  1. Where the wins cycle, the objection has nothing to name. No ordering is climbed by every winning move, so no preference of the organization predicts which regime wins.
  2. Where they do not cycle, an ordering exists, and it is fitted to the record it was computed on. The record was produced under one arrangement of authority. In CASE-003, Northstar-A and Northstar-B have the same policy and the same evidence, and different escalation authority, and different contests are won. The ordering fitted to A’s wins is not the ordering fitted to B’s. The redescription can follow the change only by refitting after it.
  3. So the revealed preference does not do what CLAIM-089 needs. CLAIM-027’s defeater asks for “a showing that every such relation is just another higher-order preference whose content predicts the outcome”. A preference fitted after each intervention on authority describes the outcome. It does not predict it. The relations that changed are what predicted the change.

What would carry the objection is a persistent potential (TERM-078): one ordering that holds across the windows on both sides of the intervention, and that the wins follow in each. If changing escalation authority left the same ordering in force, CLAIM-089 would be right about that organization, and the change in authority would be idle.

What it does not say

  • That the aggregate preference is never real. For an organization whose wins follow one persistent potential through changes in authority, CLAIM-089’s reading is the better one. This claim says which records decide that, and how.
  • That CASE-003 measured the wins. CASE-003 is a constructed contrast. The claim says what a record of its wins would have to show. A recorded pair of windows either side of a change in authority would test it.
  • That it answers CLAIM-024. Whether the account adds explanatory gain over control and institutional theory is a separate objection.

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