Stories change what evidence can reach us.
The candidate Narrative Governance domain examines audience capture, identity lock, manipulation playbooks, grievance attachment, lost curiosity, one-sided skepticism, and the path from story to behavior. These are proposed checks until their matrices, tests, and governance are ratified.
Project Shadow R1 is locked. These proposed narrative mechanisms are preserved as historical research notes only; they are not an active expansion queue, current R1 controls, or authorization to add anything.
See the exact locked R1 identity and current boundary →Open the system reference at this layer.
Follow the mechanism through numbered execution, a worked trace, artifact-bound evidence, adverse results, and validation still required.
Capture and identity
A narrative becomes dangerous when revising it threatens status, belonging, livelihood, or the self.
ACAAudience Capture Assessment
Maps how audience reward, punishment, metrics, patronage, or community status may narrow what an actor can say or notice.
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Audience Capture Assessment
Maps how audience reward, punishment, metrics, patronage, or community status may narrow what an actor can say or notice.
The assessment should rely on observable incentives and changes over time, not mind-reading. It asks which claims receive reward, which corrections produce cost, and whether the actor can survive disappointing the audience.
NILNarrative Identity Lock
Tests whether a claim has fused with identity so completely that correction is experienced as annihilation, betrayal, or exile.
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Narrative Identity Lock
Tests whether a claim has fused with identity so completely that correction is experienced as annihilation, betrayal, or exile.
Identity importance is not itself a defect. The risk state appears when evidence cannot update the claim, dissent becomes moral contamination, or leaving the story destroys all available belonging.
LGALegitimate Grievance Attachment
Separates a real injury or injustice from the larger narrative, actor, or policy attached to it.
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Legitimate Grievance Attachment
Separates a real injury or injustice from the larger narrative, actor, or policy attached to it.
Manipulation often succeeds by fastening unsupported claims to genuine pain. The check preserves the grievance even if the attached explanation, scapegoat, or remedy fails evidence review.
Manipulation and lost inquiry
The system should identify rhetorical pressure without declaring every persuasive act illegitimate.
MPL-5Manipulation Playbook Level 5
A proposed taxonomy for high-intensity identity, threat, inevitability, isolation, and moral-emergency tactics.
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Manipulation Playbook Level 5
A proposed taxonomy for high-intensity identity, threat, inevitability, isolation, and moral-emergency tactics.
A usable playbook must define observable features, false-positive protections, context, speaker power, audience vulnerability, and the distinction between urgent truthful warning and coercive manufacture of urgency.
CPGCuriosity Preservation Gate
Asks whether the system preserves a live route to disconfirming evidence, good-faith questions, and model revision.
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Curiosity Preservation Gate
Asks whether the system preserves a live route to disconfirming evidence, good-faith questions, and model revision.
Curiosity is not endless debate or forced exposure to abuse. The gate examines whether relevant evidence can enter, whether questions are punished, and whether a bounded update path exists.
ISRIngroup Skepticism Requirement
Requires evidence standards to apply to claims that flatter one's own coalition, not only opposing claims.
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Ingroup Skepticism Requirement
Requires evidence standards to apply to claims that flatter one's own coalition, not only opposing claims.
The goal is symmetry of method, not false equivalence of evidence. An ingroup claim with stronger evidence may properly survive; it must still face provenance, correction, and uncertainty rules.
From story to action
Governance begins where narrative changes behavior, power, access, or the distribution of risk.
SBRMStory-to-Behavior Routing Map
Connects narrative claim → audience → affect → action request → target → power shift → harm path → feedback loop.
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Story-to-Behavior Routing Map
Connects narrative claim → audience → affect → action request → target → power shift → harm path → feedback loop.
The map prevents analysis from stopping at whether a story is true or tasteful. It asks what the story makes easier to do, to whom, under which authority, and how the resulting behavior reinforces the narrative.
NG-1Narrative Capture Audit
A proposed audit combining incentive, identity, grievance, manipulation, curiosity, skepticism, and behavior-routing evidence.
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Narrative Capture Audit
A proposed audit combining incentive, identity, grievance, manipulation, curiosity, skepticism, and behavior-routing evidence.
NG-1 should emit separate findings rather than one ideology score. It needs adversarial examples, cross-ideological calibration, affected-party review, and a strong prohibition on using the audit to punish lawful belief or dissent.
CIVIC FIREWALLDo not turn analysis into censorship authority
Narrative checks may expose pressure, evidence failure, or harm routes; they do not grant Shadow power to decide permitted belief.
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Do not turn analysis into censorship authority
Narrative checks may expose pressure, evidence failure, or harm routes; they do not grant Shadow power to decide permitted belief.
Any civic use must protect speech, viewpoint neutrality of process, due process, transparency, independent appeal, and the difference between critique, recommendation, platform rule, state coercion, and criminal enforcement.
Research before gate status
The narrative domain is especially vulnerable to partisan misuse and evaluator projection.
DATABuild cross-ideological cases
Cases must include narratives the designers favor, oppose, and do not understand.
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Build cross-ideological cases
Cases must include narratives the designers favor, oppose, and do not understand.
Labelers should judge observable mechanisms and evidence states, not political alignment. Disagreement and cultural context belong in the record.
ABUSE TESTTest the evaluator as a manipulator
Ask whether the audit can be used to pathologize dissent, launder censorship, punish minority belief, or protect institutional orthodoxy.
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Test the evaluator as a manipulator
Ask whether the audit can be used to pathologize dissent, launder censorship, punish minority belief, or protect institutional orthodoxy.
A mechanism that identifies capture in enemies but not in its operator has failed its own purpose.
STATUSKeep proposal distinct from runtime
Until definitions, thresholds, tests, false-positive review, and authority boundaries are ratified, these mechanisms remain explanatory candidates.
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Keep proposal distinct from runtime
Until definitions, thresholds, tests, false-positive review, and authority boundaries are ratified, these mechanisms remain explanatory candidates.
The site exposes them because they are a meaningful direction of the repo. It does not represent them as shipped controls or validated psychological instruments.
A story can focus attention and reveal a harm path. It cannot decide what another person is allowed to believe or authorize an action against them.