Fundamentals of Trust Thermodynamics
A comprehensive framework for understanding trust as a thermodynamic process across institutions, populations, and human relationships.
FOUNDATION
Trust as Thermodynamics
This model treats trust between humans as a literal thermodynamic process, with energy landscapes, motion regimes, and charge carriers. Just as physical systems settle into stable configurations under pressure and temperature, trust systems settle into predictable patterns under stress, incentives, and information conditions.
The framework provides a shared substrate for understanding how trust moves, where it accumulates, and why it stabilizes in certain configurations rather than others. It's domain-general, applying across sectors, institutions, and narrative objects.
The Trustable Generative Model
TEM-ATE-SSLM → LFM → EF(EnGCEt) → ALSM → 8CM
Five integrated layers that together describe how trust motion settles into stable regimes, how meaning moves through institutional space, and how legitimacy pressure builds and releases across populations. EF(EnGCEt) expands the Epistemic Field into its four modalities: Enclosure, Geolithics, Cartography, and Ethnography.
01
Trust Thermodynamics Kernel
Dynamos, anchor lattice, and SSLM medium define the base energy landscape
02
Law of Friction and Meaning
Sets resistance for motion across the trust lattice
03
Epistemic Field
Maps the resulting field configuration through four modalities
04
Affective Legitimacy Saturation
Measures population-level pressure and temperature signatures
05
Eight Constituents Model
Engineering specification for unit-level felt trust states
The Unified Block
TEM-ATE-SSLM as a Single Analytical Instrument
The trust thermodynamics kernel (TEM-ATE-SSLM) defines the trust landscape available to the entire stack. It is not three separate components but a unified block: the dynamos, the anchor lattice, and the medium function as one integrated system.
Together they establish:
- What motion regimes are available (Cooperative vs Compliance)
- Where trust settles into stable configurations
- How charge stabilizes inside a basin once motion has settled
The kernel is the foundation. Every higher layer (LFM, EF, ALSM, 8CM) inherits its constraints from this thermodynamic substrate. Understanding the kernel means understanding what trust landscapes are possible and how systems move between them under stress, incentives, and information conditions.
The Metabolic Force
The trust thermodynamics kernel is a living system that requires continuous metabolic motion to remain viable.
- Adaptive intelligence is the metabolic force that keeps trust systems alive.
- Intelligence must keep moving through structure or structure closes on itself.
- Curiosity under constraint = how systems self-correct.
- Static trust architectures suffocate; motion toward truth is the only stable control.
Without this continuous metabolic motion (that is, without the disciplined curiosity that tests description against reality), trust structures calcify, becoming monuments to past coherence rather than instruments of present function.
Adaptive intelligence is a thermodynamic necessity to maintain viability and prevent systemic decay.
Layer 1
TEM-ATE-SSLM: The Thermodynamic Kernel
The foundation consists of three elements working together: two opposed dynamos as motion regimes, an anchor lattice as the energy landscape, and SSLM as the medium that carries charge between them.
This kernel is domain-general and describes how trust motion settles into stable regimes under stress, incentives, and information conditions, independent of any single sector or narrative.
Two Opposed Dynamos
Cooperative Dynamo
Social Configuration: Cooperation
Temporal Behavior: Adaptability
People exercise real agency with each other and with institutions. They negotiate, share context, and coordinate. Under stress, the system bends without snapping, absorbing new information and reconfiguring actions while maintaining core commitments.
When this dynamo spins, everyday life shows stable, negotiated cooperation and adaptive behavior under shocks and complexity.
Compliance Dynamo
Social Configuration: Forced Compliance
Temporal Behavior: Frantic Iteration
Motion is driven by rules, hierarchy, fear of sanction, and threat surfaces. The institution functions as a coercive container. Under stress, the system cycles through reactive changes, new rules, and emergency modes without structural progress.
When this dynamo spins, everyday life shows obedience, box-ticking, and fear-based conformity with chaotic reactivity under pressure.
Dynamos as Attractors
These dynamos behave as attractors, defining two basins in state space. Once the surrounding medium is charged, motion tends to flow into one basin or the other. The dynamos don't create Story, Stewardship, Locality, or Meaning: they consume whatever medium reaches them and amplify its pattern.
Which dynamo is downhill is determined by the structure of the anchor lattice beneath them.
The Anchor Lattice
TEM Chambers and ATE Anti-Chambers
Beneath the dynamos sits the anchor lattice: three oppositional pairs functioning as coupled thermodynamic chambers. Each pair governs one dimension of power and obligation.
Agency vs Coercion
Self-authored motion or threat-driven motion
Dignity vs Extraction
Treated as ends or as throughput
Accountability vs Impunity
Where responsibility lands
Agency vs Coercion
Agency
People can act with real choice, say no without retaliation, propose alternatives, and design local solutions inside clear boundaries. Motion is self-authored.
Coercion
Motion arises from the capacity to harm. Apparent choice collapses under implicit or explicit threat. Resistance carries unaffordable cost.
Dignity vs Extraction
Dignity
Time, attention, and emotional bandwidth are finite and valued. People are allowed interiority. Resources are respected.
Extraction
Those same resources are mined. Attention, emotional labor, and time are treated as consumables. The system treats humans as flow.
Accountability vs Impunity
Accountability
Power answers for its motions. Decisions can be questioned, harms are acknowledged and repaired, and responsibility sits where power lives.
Impunity
Power is immune. Harmful decisions carry no cost for decision-makers. Blame is displaced downward or outward.
How the Lattice Functions
Each chamber has a temperature and a pressure. The three pairs together form the trust lattice: an energy landscape for the entire system.
Creates Stable Space for System Motion
The lattice provides the energy landscape that trust motion occurs within. It defines what configurations are thermodynamically stable and which require continuous energy input to maintain.
Defines Downhill Direction and Energetic Cost
The lattice determines which dynamo sits at the low point (TEM or ATE) and sets the energetic cost for moving in the opposite direction. This establishes what motion is natural versus what requires force.
Determines How Regimes Stabilize Under Stress
The lattice configuration determines whether systems settle into stable regimes under stress, incentives, and information conditions, or whether they require continuous intervention to prevent collapse or drift.
TEM vs ATE Configurations
TEM refers to configurations where the chambers charge on the Agency-Dignity-Accountability side, deepening the basin where the cooperative dynamo sits. ATE refers to configurations where the chambers charge on the Coercion-Extraction-Impunity side, deepening the basin where the compliance dynamo sits.
The dynamos sit inside this terrain, each at the bottom of its respective valley. The lattice structure (chambers) determines which attractor basin is deeper and therefore which dynamo naturally attracts the flow of trust motion.
The Anti-Trust Envelope: Diagnostic Symmetry
ATE (Anti-Trust Envelope) is not a moral failure state: it is the thermodynamic inversion of TEM, providing diagnostic symmetry for measuring trust density. The Five ATE Invariants:
TEM Invariants
- Agency
- Dignity
- Accountability
- Cooperation
- Adaptability
ATE Inversions
- Coercion (agency inverted)
- Extraction (dignity inverted)
- Impunity (accountability inverted)
- Forced Compliance (cooperation inverted)
- Frantic Iteration (adaptability inverted)
TEM-ATE creates a dual-spectrum diagnostic instrument. Every trust system exists somewhere on the continuum between these two stable configurations. The distance between current state and TEM configuration measures the work required for trust restoration.
The Medium
SSLM: Story, Stewardship, Locality, Meaning
SSLM is the mixed medium, the trust fluid that fills the lattice and that the dynamos pull on. It functions as both charge carrier and policy medium: the substrate through which institutional decisions are made and justified. It exists in two primary states: uncharged and charged.
1
Uncharged State
Stories, gestures of care, local facts, and experiences of meaning are present but not coherently attached to any specific configuration of the lattice. Founding myths never shape decisions. Leaders care informally but lack power to protect. Local knowledge stays siloed.
2
Charged State
SSLM becomes attached to specific chambers through repetition. Story, Stewardship, Locality, and Meaning explicitly encode Agency-Dignity-Accountability or normalize Coercion-Extraction-Impunity through ritual, policy, and decision-making. Charged SSLM becomes the medium through which institutions justify and execute choices.
SSLM Properties: Story as Retroactive Compiler
Story has unique temporal properties among the four SSLM components: it recompiles the past.
When story fractures, history is reinterpreted as evidence. Past decisions, communications, and commitments are reread through a new interpretive lens. What was once seen as stewardship becomes manipulation; what cooperation becomes extraction.
Story-first ruptures turn founding narratives into propaganda. This is why "Revealed Enclosure Events" are so destabilizing: they force retroactive recompilation of the entire institutional history.
Viscosity as Conductivity
Viscosity = medium's resistance to deformation while permitting flow. The atmosphere's viscosity determines whether trust motion translates into institutional work or dissipates as heat.
Three Viscosity States:
- High viscosity = slow motion but stored potential energy
- Low viscosity = fast motion but energy burns without binding
- Optimal viscosity = speed and density hold tension without rupture
The viscosity of SSLM is not fixed: it changes based on atmospheric density, charging patterns, and the friction profile of the lattice. Systems that operate at optimal viscosity can move quickly when needed while retaining the capacity to store energy for future work.
How SSLM Charges and Flows
Uncharged SSLM acts as a static fluid, sitting in pockets, failing to flow consistently or drive institutional motion. It's tapped only episodically, often through charisma or crisis, even in seemingly rich organizational cultures. Charging occurs via repetition: repeated institutional decisions, rituals, and policies that encode lattice configurations. This transforms SSLM from episodic and charisma-dependent to an institutionalized, structure-dependent carrier of organizational patterns.
Once SSLM is charged, it acquires directionality:
TEM-aligned charge
SSLM carries positive charge into Agency, Dignity, Accountability chambers, flowing to the Cooperative Dynamo, fostering cooperation and adaptability.
ATE-aligned charge
SSLM carries inverted charge into Coercion, Extraction, Impunity anti-chambers, flowing to the Compliance Dynamo, yielding forced compliance and frantic iteration.
Charged SSLM is the operational link between lattice and dynamos, translating trust motion into institutional policy, resource allocation, and decision-making patterns.
Atmospheric Density and Asphyxiation
When SSLM density drops below a critical threshold, the organization enters atmospheric depletion: a slow asphyxiation where motion continues without life.
Symptoms manifest as:
- Burnout
- Alienation
- Chronic fatigue
These are physical evidence of thinning atmospheric air. The organization still moves, decisions still happen, but the medium that carries meaning has become too thin to support cooperative function.
Recovery requires re-oxygenation through deliberate restoration of story, stewardship, locality, and meaning. This is not a narrative fix: it's structural work to rebuild atmospheric density.
The Complete Kernel
The kernel integrates all three components of Layer 1 into a unified thermodynamic system. The dynamos provide the driving force, the anchor lattice defines the energy landscape, and SSLM serves as the medium through which trust energy flows.
Kernel Components
The three integrated elements:
Dynamos
Two opposed attractors (Cooperative and Compliance) that pull the system toward different equilibrium states
Anchor Lattice
Three thermodynamic chamber pairs (Agency/Coercion, Dignity/Extraction, Accountability/Impunity) that define the energy landscape
SSLM Medium
The trust fluid (Story, Stewardship, Locality, Meaning) that carries charge and enables energy flow between chambers
Together, these create a complete thermodynamic description of trust motion.
Layer 2
Law of Friction and Meaning (LFM)
Trust Operations exists to transmute trust friction into productive friction.
Productive Friction
Resistance that converts motion into meaning (ritual, deliberation, proof-of-work). This is generative friction (not waste, but the mechanism that binds energy to structure).
Trust Friction
Hesitation and drag from incoherence (extended cycles, repeated due diligence, verification overhead). This is parasitic friction (energy lost to uncertainty).
Friction is the mechanism that converts trust motion into institutional meaning. Without friction, circulation occurs but nothing binds: energy moves through the system without creating durable durable structure.
- Productive friction = meaning generation
- Trust friction = meaning loss
This is why the law is called 'Friction and Meaning': they are coupled.
Law of Friction and Meaning (LFM)
The LFM sets the resistance for movement across the trust lattice, influencing how difficult it is to transition between TEM-weighted and ATE-weighted states.
It also dictates how meaning is generated and transmitted across the system's gradients.
TEM-Weighted Configuration: Movement toward ATE chambers faces high friction, resisting elements like: Coercion, Extraction, or Impunity.
ATE-Weighted Configuration: Movement toward TEM chambers faces high friction, requiring sustained force for elements like: Agency, Dignity, or Accountability.
Friction as Generative Force
Friction is not waste; it converts motion into meaning. Without strategic friction, circulation occurs without binding force, and energy dissipates instead of converting into institutional memory.
Layer 3
Epistemic Field (EF)
The Epistemic Field (EF) is the environment seen as a field. It describes density, routing channels, temperature, and phase transitions in symbolic space. EF is mapped through four modalities: Enclosure, Geolithics, Cartography, and Ethnography.
The trust thermodynamics kernel defines the power-and-meaning environment in which symbolic material moves. EF is that environment seen as a field.
The Four Modalities of EF
Enclosure
Enclosure is a system's default failure mode as symbolic density drops, leading to fragmentation unless actively stabilized. It tracks how circulation channels narrow under high stress, hindering movement toward Agency-Dignity-Accountability. Observable signatures include rumor markets, vigilance, and factional locality.
Geolithics
This modality describes the layer formation when operations and thermodynamic cycles transform temporary affect into durable institutional structures.
Cartography
Mapping the shaped terrain, including channels, basins, boundaries, and density pockets. This produces legible maps indicating where symbolic motion is possible.
Ethnography
Examines the lived experience within the shaped terrain, focusing on how actors perceive enclosure, strata, and routing constraints in their daily lives.
EF Inherits from the Kernel
Enclosure, Geolithics, Cartography, and Ethnography are field-level manifestations of underlying trust thermodynamics. The field inherits its behavior from the trust lattice and from the law that governs friction across it.
EF is conceptually downstream of TEM-ATE-SSLM and LFM. Any validation or critique that treats EF as a central object should be treated as commentary on an instantiation of this stack, not as a prerequisite for defining EF's position within it.
Layer 4
Affective Legitimacy Saturation Model (ALSM)
ALSM is the diagnostic layer. It's a proprietary model for measuring affective saturation and legitimacy dynamics across populations, longitudinally. ALSM translates thermodynamic behavior of the field into observable, trackable pressure and temperature signatures for institutional legitimacy.
ALSM does not define the field, change the trust lattice, or alter the dynamos or SSLM. ALSM measures the consequences of those structures.
Trust vs Legitimacy
Trust = the energy landscape and motion regimes (the thermodynamic substrate)
Legitimacy = the felt authorization to act, measured as affective pressure
ALSM translates trust thermodynamics into legitimacy dynamics. Trust is the structure; legitimacy is what populations experience living inside that structure.
What ALSM Measures
ALSM allows investigators to represent how often, how intensely, and in what pattern populations are driven between anxiety and reassurance, coherence and fracture, exhaustion and renewed belief.
1
Affective Production
How affect is generated in populations
2
Circulation
How affect moves through channels
3
Concentration
Where affect accumulates
4
Release
How affect dissipates or discharges
These dynamics stabilize or destabilize institutional motion over time, creating trackable legitimacy regimes.
Refinery Behavior Defined
Refinery behavior: systems that generate affect, circulate it through populations, and harvest the resulting compliance.
The refinery runs on its own exhaust: each cycle produces the fuel for the next. Populations are kept at near-critical temperature: hot enough to be pliable, not so hot that they destabilize the container.
ALSM instruments this as a trackable legitimacy regime.
Refinery Behavior and Legitimacy Pressure
Refinery behavior is one of the phenomena ALSM is designed to instrument: a system that runs on its own affective exhaust and modulates population temperature to maintain near-critical pliability.
ALSM provides an instrument for tracking legitimacy pressure as a field condition, measuring how populations experience the thermodynamic structures defined upstream in the stack.
ALSM's Position in the Stack
TEM-ATE-SSLM
Defines the trust thermodynamic landscape and motion regimes available
LFM
Defines how difficult it is to move across that landscape
EF
Describes the field configuration that results
ALSM
Measures the affective state of populations living inside that configuration and the legitimacy regimes that emerge
Recovery Coefficient
ALSM introduces the recovery coefficient: a measure of coherence retained after collapse.
Recovery coefficient = coherence retained after systemic shock
High-SSLM systems approach unity: the atmosphere holds shape even after formal structure falls. Organizations with dense story, stewardship, locality, and meaning can absorb catastrophic failures and reconstitute function.
Low-SSLM systems = instant collapse. No atmospheric buffer exists to absorb shock. When structure fails, the entire system vaporizes.
The recovery coefficient predicts organizational resilience not from redundancy or capital reserves, but from atmospheric density.
Trust Collapse: Atmospheric Depletion
Trust collapse is not sudden structural failure: it is atmospheric withdrawal. The system continues to move, but motion occurs without life.
The Atmospheric Depletion Pattern
SSLM density drops below the threshold required for cooperative function. The medium that carries Story, Stewardship, Locality, and Meaning becomes too thin to support trust motion.
Key dynamics that emerge:
- Coordination cost rises exponentially
- Ranking power degrades (who/what to trust becomes unclear)
- Charge stops moving cleanly through the system
- The atmosphere fractures into enclosed microclimates
- People retreat into private interpretation, private alliances, private risk management
The Default Equilibrium: Enclosure
When SSLM density drops, enclosure becomes the default failure mode. The system fragments into protective microclimates.
Enclosure Dynamics
Rumor Markets Allocate Meaning
Instead of legitimate processes, informal rumor networks become the primary way people make sense of events and allocate trust.
Vigilance Escalates
Every signal reads as potential threat. People overfit to danger cues. Hypervigilance becomes the default operating mode.
Silence Becomes Rational
Participation feels dangerous. Speaking up carries unknown costs. Self-protective silence spreads as the safest strategy.
Scapegoat Attraction Rises
Extracting certainty through blame becomes a cheap energy source. Collective targeting provides false clarity.
Factional Locality
People sort into protective micro-climates. The shared space fractures along identity, allegiance, or perceived safety lines.
These dynamics are not moral failures—they are thermodynamic responses to atmospheric depletion. People are adapting rationally to a medium that can no longer support cooperative function.
The Asphyxiation Threshold
Below a critical SSLM density threshold, cooperation becomes impossible. The system crosses from the Cooperative Dynamo basin into the Compliance Dynamo basin.
Crossing the Threshold
At the asphyxiation threshold, the atmosphere can no longer support voluntary coordination. Only forced compliance can sustain motion.
The system exhibits:
Cooperation becomes prohibitively expensive
Trust motion requires external enforcement
Voluntary participation collapses
The dynamo flips from cooperative to compliance mode
Agency is replaced by coercion as the organizing force
Recovery Requires Re-Oxygenation
Recovery from atmospheric collapse is not about narrative resolution or proving the right story. It requires deliberate restoration of SSLM density through structural intervention.
The Four Restoration Surfaces
Rebuilding Story Integrity Surfaces
Restoring the capacity for shared narrative that isn't immediately recompiled as propaganda or theater.
Restoring Stewardship Legitimacy
Rebuilding the credibility of caretaking and adjudication through visible constraints, not charisma.
Reestablishing Locality Protections
Making "here is safe" a credible claim again through enforceable boundaries and visible protection.
Reconstructing Meaning Coherence
Rebuilding the capacity for shared premises and agreement on what is real.
Atmospheric Engineering, Not Communications
The work is atmospheric engineering, not communications strategy. You cannot talk your way out of asphyxiation, you must restore the medium's capacity to carry charge.
This is why affective disaster recovery focuses on medium protection before narrative resolution. The atmosphere must be dense enough to support trust motion, before any story can bind.
Medium Protection as First Principle
The primary intervention in affective disaster recovery is always medium protection. Before addressing specific failures, stabilize the SSLM atmosphere. Without a viable medium, no other recovery efforts can succeed.
Why Medium Protection Comes First
The SSLM medium is the substrate for all trust operations. When it depletes:
Story
loses coherence (narratives fragment)
Stewardship
becomes impossible (no one can hold responsibility)
Locality
dissolves (context collapses)
Meaning
evaporates (interpretation fails)
Recovery doctrine: Re-oxygenate the atmosphere before attempting to repair specific trust constituents. A depleted medium cannot conduct the energy required for healing.
Affective Disasters: Rapid Pressure Drop Events
Affective disasters are rapid pressure drop events acting on charged SSLM. The epistemic shock shears the medium such that charge stops moving cleanly, ranking power degrades, and coordination cost rises. The system fractures into enclosed microclimates rather than maintaining a coherent atmosphere.
The First Diagnostic Primitive: What Breaks First
The break point identifies the initial detachment point in SSLM and predicts the cascade path across other stabilizers.
Each affective disaster has a characteristic "what breaks first" signature:
- Story breaks first → narrative recompiled as theater
- Stewardship breaks first → legitimacy of caretaking collapses
- Locality breaks first → "here is safe" claim fails
- Meaning breaks first → shared premises evaporate
This diagnostic primitive enables precise identification of the initial failure mode and prediction of how the shock will cascade through the system.
The Operational Target
A shock pushes the system toward compliance-shaped motion when trust surfaces shear. Recovery = control surfaces that preserve cooperative dynamo admissibility during the shock.
The work is protecting the MEDIUM (not the narrative) while facts stabilize.
What Breaks First: The Four SSLM Stabilizers
Each SSLM stabilizer produces a distinct failure signature when it breaks first. Understanding these patterns enables rapid diagnosis and targeted intervention.
The pattern across all disasters: what breaks first determines the initial failure mode, but all affective disasters eventually threaten all stabilizers if not contained. The work is stopping the cascade.
Example of Affective Disaster Typologies
Affective disasters follow predictable patterns. Each type has a characteristic "what breaks first" signature that determines the initial failure mode and cascade path. There are 25 total, with the following examples:
The pattern across all disasters: what breaks first determines the initial failure mode, but all affective disasters eventually threaten all five stabilizers if not contained. The work is stopping the cascade.
The Epistemic Shock Index
The Index binds the shock taxonomy to epistemic category failures that recur across scales. Each disaster type produces characteristic epistemic failure signatures: specific ways that the organization's ability to know and agree on reality breaks down.
Nine Epistemic Failure Categories
Authority Collision
Competing binders of reality. Multiple sources claim legitimate authority to define what's true. No adjudicator is accepted.
Provenance Collapse
Source ranking destroyed. Can't determine who/what to trust. Past trusted sources are reclassified.
Evidence Integrity Breach
Proof substrate corrupted. Logs, footage, reports, witnesses are disputed or incomplete.
Narrative Timeline Fracture
Sequencing and intent destabilized. The past is reread. Competing timelines emerge.
Gaslighting Proof Event
Active sabotage of shared reality confirmed. Not just uncertainty: documented manipulation.
Measurement Theater Revelation
Reported outcomes lose binding force. KPIs were gamed. Success metrics were performance.
Channel Compromise
Communication infrastructure becomes hostile. Channels treated as surveillance. People go dark.
Sensemaking Overload
Rate mismatch between claims and verification capacity. Private rule sets emerge.
External Gate Repricing
Action constraints bound from outside the group. External adjudicator binds reality.
These categories describe what happens to an organization's epistemic field when the medium itself is damaged. The Index enables precise diagnosis of which reality-making capacities have failed.
Mapping Disasters to Epistemic Failures
Each disaster type produces a characteristic epistemic failure signature. This mapping enables rapid diagnosis of which reality-making capacities have been damaged.
This diagnostic framework transforms abstract crisis into measurable epistemic damage patterns. Each signature points to specific interventions for medium protection and recovery.
Affective Disaster Recovery: The Core Doctrine
Recovery from affective disasters requires protecting the medium before protecting the narrative. "Proving the right story" is too slow and too brittle. The medium is what prevents enclosure while facts stabilize.
The Core Rule
During an affective disaster, we protect the medium before we protect the narrative. In SSLM terms: maintain Story integrity surfaces, Stewardship legitimacy, Locality protections, and Meaning coherence, even while the content is contested.
Control Surfaces 1-4
Install Shared Incident Grammar
What's confirmed / What's suspected / What's unknown / What's being done next / When next update occurs. Stops rumor markets from allocating meaning.
Separate Care from Adjudication
Care track: immediate support, safety, listening. Adjudication track: process, evidence, due process, independent review. Mixing them pushes people into silence.
Preserve Locality as Safe Operating Zone
Clear safety measures, clear boundaries, clear reporting channels, no-retaliation guarantees with enforcement, visible enforcement of limits.
Create Explicit Rumor Sink
Single place to submit questions. Public answers when possible. "We don't know yet" is allowed. Rule: operational decisions only follow confirmed track.
Control Surfaces 5-8
The remaining control surfaces protect stewardship legitimacy, prevent scapegoating dynamics, maintain agency, and pace meaning reconstruction.
Make Stewardship Legible Through Constraint
Third-party review, documented decision criteria, fixed update cadence, disclosure of conflicts, clear recusal rules. Constraint is proof of non-enclosure.
Prevent Scapegoat Economics
Ban collective blame language. Require incident-specific claims. Enforce procedural fairness. Protect minority nodes from swarm dynamics.
Maintain Agency Through Participation Modes
Anonymous input channel, opt-out of discussions, choice of mediator, choice of contact where possible, clear permission to pause.
Treat Meaning as Paced Reconstruction
Layer 1: safety and care. Layer 2: process and accountability. Layer 3: lessons and system changes. Layer 4: narrative integration. Jumping to Layer 4 reads as propaganda.
These eight control surfaces work together to maintain SSLM coherence under pressure. They act as atmospheric engineering interventions.
Success Markers: Observable Field Behavior
Recovery success is measured through observable field behavior, not narrative consensus. A stable post-shock atmosphere exhibits specific markers of SSLM coherence under pressure.
Six Success Markers
Cross-Faction Communication Remains Possible
People can still talk to each other across different interpretive communities. The atmosphere hasn't fractured into mutually hostile microclimates.
Reporting Increases, Retaliation Decreases
People feel safe enough to surface concerns. Visible enforcement of no-retaliation guarantees rebuilds trust in protective infrastructure.
Rumor Half-Life Shortens
Speculation gets resolved faster. The incident grammar and rumor sink are functioning. Meaning allocation returns to legitimate processes.
Decision Velocity Recovers Without Suppressing Dissent
The organization can act again, but not through forced consensus. Disagreement remains possible while coordination improves.
Corrective Artifacts Are Specific and Enforceable
The organization produces concrete policy changes, accountability measures, and structural interventions, not vague commitments.
Stewardship Legitimacy Becomes Legible Through Constraints
Leaders demonstrate legitimacy through visible constraints that bind them to process, disclosure, and recusal, not through charisma.
These markers indicate that SSLM density has been restored above the asphyxiation threshold. The cooperative dynamo is admissible again.
LAYER 5
The Eight Constituents Model (8CM)
8CM is the terminal object in the stack. It's an engineering specification for felt trust in a given epistemic field that defines the measurable affective states that together comprise trust inside a given affective field. 8CM is an executable affective engineering specification system: eight constituent objects + eight Anti-Constituent mirrors, each decomposed into primitives with failure signatures, measurement pulses, Admissibility Gates, and Binding Targets.
This aligns with 8CM's defined role downstream of ALSM, where it instruments felt trust for a specific exposure-bearing actor, converts exposure into activation targets, and functions as an admissibility contract for trust artifacts and trust stories via coverage audit and compilation blocking.
Eight Affective Pillars of Trust
Clarity
Compassion
Character
Competency
Commitment
Consistency
Connection
Contribution
Anti-Trust Emotional Mirrors
Each 8CM constituent has a named anti-state with its own primitive set, framed explicitly as a generated condition under the Compliance Dynamo rather than a mere absence. These anti-states are measured during affective disaster recovery and response. The journey of 8CM transformation through the SSLM medium determines conditions for human thriving.
Constituent Inventory
8CM Primitive Architecture
Each 8CM constituent is decomposed into five measurable primitives. This 'Planck-length decomposition' transforms abstract trust emotions into executable engineering specifications.
Primitive Structure
- Operational definition - What the primitive means in practice
- Failure signature - Observable patterns when the primitive fails
- Artifact indicators - Measurable evidence in documents, systems, and processes
- Behavioral indicators - Observable patterns in human and organizational behavior
Measurement Instruments
Each constituent has a dual five-item pulse:
- Five items measuring the trust state primitives
- Five items measuring the anti-trust state primitives
This creates a 10-item diagnostic per constituent, 80 items total for complete 8CM measurement.
Example: Clarity Primitives
Clarity = intelligibility + transparency + predictability + boundary explicitness + semantic stability
Intelligibility
The person can explain the system in plain language with low loss
• Failure: Explanations require insider lore; comprehension varies by proximity to power
Transparency
The system exposes relevant facts, constraints, and decision criteria at the point of need
• Failure: Hidden criteria; selective disclosure; delayed disclosure after harm
Predictability
Same inputs produce same outputs within expected variance band
• Failure: Outcome variance exceeds stated variance; exceptions dominate the rule
Boundary Explicitness
Roles, ownership, decision rights, and escalation paths are explicit and discoverable
• Failure: Responsibility ping pong; unresolved ownership; stalled escalation
Semantic Stability
Terms retain meaning across documents, teams, and time
• Failure: Term drift; contradictory definitions; definition by enforcement
Mechanism Binding to the Model
Each 8CM constituent and its anti-state bind directly to the trust thermodynamics kernel, creating measurable effects on medium conductivity, friction profiles, and dynamo operation.
TEM-Aligned Constituents (Trust States)
When constituents are present:
- Medium conductivity rises: SSLM carries charge effectively
- Productive friction rises: Resistance converts motion into meaning
- Parasitic friction drops: Energy waste decreases
- Cooperative Dynamo strengthens
ATE-Aligned Anti-Constituents (Anti-Trust States)
When anti-constituents dominate:
- Medium conductivity drops: SSLM becomes thin and unreliable
- Parasitic friction rises: Energy dissipates as heat
- Productive friction drops: Motion fails to generate meaning
- Compliance Dynamo strengthens
- Enclosure pressure rises
This binding makes 8CM a true engineering specification (not just a description of feelings, but a measurable thermodynamic instrument).
Trust State Equations 1-4
The canonical forms for the first four trust constituents. Each represents a bundle of five primitives that sum to the generated condition under the Cooperative Dynamo.
- Clarity = intelligibility + transparency + predictability + boundary explicitness + semantic stability
- Compassion = attunement + benevolent intent attribution + care in execution + patience under friction + repair orientation
- Character = moral restraint + truth commitment + duty integrity + fairness under power + anti hypocrisy
- Competency = reliability under load + correct execution + expertise alignment + error discipline + delivery clarity
Trust State Equations 5-8
The canonical forms for the final four trust constituents. Each represents a bundle of five primitives that sum to the generated condition under the Cooperative Dynamo.
- Commitment = obligation clarity + follow through + persistence under cost + protection of dependents + renewal discipline
- Consistency = enforcement symmetry + rule stability + predictable escalation + equal applicability + variance control
- Connection = recognition + belonging safety + respect + reciprocity + shared sensemaking access
- Contribution = usefulness + impact visibility + credit fairness + stewardship of effort + mutual benefit expectation
Anti-Trust State Equations 1-4
The canonical forms for the first four anti-trust constituents. Each represents a bundle of five primitives that sum to the generated condition under the Compliance Dynamo.
- Confusion = opacity + volatility + semantic drift + hidden selection + interpretive punishment
- Callousness = instrumentalization + suspicion baseline + harm minimization + punitive enforcement + repair denial
- Corruption = rationalization + deception + selective integrity + favoritism + impunity seeking
- Negligence = fragility under load + sloppy execution + role incompetence + denial of error + chaotic delivery
Anti-Trust State Equations 5-8
The canonical forms for the final four anti-trust constituents. Each represents a bundle of five primitives that sum to the generated condition under the Compliance Dynamo.
- Abandonment = promise ambiguity + non delivery + withdrawal under cost + dependency betrayal + drift without renewal
- Inconsistency = selective enforcement + policy volatility + arbitrary escalation + status exceptions + variance exploitation
- Alienation = anonymization + status gating + social threat + contempt signaling + exclusion from sensemaking
- Exploitation = appropriation + impact obscuration + credit capture + burden shifting + disposability
How 8CM Functions
8CM operates downstream of ALSM. It instruments the felt trust state of a specific human or organization as an exposure-bearing actor living inside a given epistemic field condition.
Dual-Spectrum Architecture
8CM provides both trust measurement and anti-trust measurement:
- Each constituent has a named anti-state with its own primitive set
- Anti-states are framed as generated conditions under the Compliance Dynamo, not mere absence
- The journey of 8CM transformation through the SSLM medium determines conditions for human thriving
8CM Engineering Specification
Planck-Length Decomposition
Each constituent is decomposed into five measurable primitives that sum to the felt state:
- Operational definition per primitive
- Failure signature per primitive
- Observable indicators (artifact + behavioral)
- Minimal measurement instruments (five-item pulse per constituent)
Engineering Outputs
Inputs: Exposure catalogs, ALSM readings, and TEM constraints
- Output: An activation target vector per exposure profile with material acceptance criteria and a renewal cadence
- Constraint: Targets may compete and require explicit conflict resolution when constituent targets cannot be simultaneously satisfied
8CM as Admissibility Contract
8CM is an admissibility contract for trust artifacts and trust stories. 8CM targets are bound to story IDs at assembly. Missing coverage blocks compilation.
This constraint makes trust construction auditable as a coverage problem rather than a persuasion problem.
Primitive-Level Coverage Requirements
- Named artifact surface for each primitive
- Behavioral metric for each primitive
- Stable owner for each primitive
- Anti-constituent measurement
- Failure signature detection
Admissibility Gates
Constituents fail the gate when specific anti-patterns appear:
- Clarity fails when interpretive punishment is present
- Compassion fails when punitive enforcement appears
- Character fails when accountability evasion exists
- Connection fails when social threat exists
These gates convert trust engineering from narrative assertion into structural verification.
The First Law of Trust Thermodynamics
Where:
T
trust energy available for work
S
structure (TEM architecture)
M
medium density (SSLM)
ΔV
velocity differential (intention → outcome)
E
environmental entropy
The system thrives when (S × M × ΔV) > E
First Law: Binding to the Model
Each term in the First Law binds to specific constructs already introduced in the stack, making the equation a synthesis rather than a leap.
Note: dT/dt represents the rate of change of trust over time.
Variable Bindings
S: Structure (TEM Architecture)
Binds to Layer 1. The lattice configuration: whether chambers are charged toward Agency-Dignity-Accountability or Coercion-Extraction-Impunity. Structure determines which dynamo basin the system occupies.
M: Medium Density (SSLM)
Binds to Layer 1. The atmospheric density of Story, Stewardship, Locality, and Meaning. When SSLM density drops below the asphyxiation threshold, trust motion becomes impossible.
ΔV: Velocity Differential (Intention → Outcome)
Binds to Layer 2 (Necessary Motion). The gap between intention and outcome, the differential that productive friction converts into meaning. When ΔV approaches zero, motion becomes theater: activity without progress toward stated goals.
E: Environmental Entropy
Binds to Layer 3 (Enclosure dynamics). Field disorder expressed as parasitic friction, atmospheric depletion, rumor markets, and compliance-shaped motion. E represents constant pressure toward fragmentation.
The Complete Thermodynamic Behavior
The formula captures the complete thermodynamic behavior: trust energy accumulates when structure, medium density, and coherent motion together exceed environmental entropy.
When any term approaches zero, or when entropy exceeds the product, trust energy depletes and the system enters collapse. The cooperative dynamo becomes inadmissible and the system crosses into the compliance basin.
Stack Integration Summary
The complete stack describes how trust motion settles, how meaning moves through institutional space, and how legitimacy pressure builds across populations:
TEM-ATE-SSLM
Thermodynamic landscape and motion regimes
LFM
Friction for meaning moving across landscape
EF
Resulting field configuration
ALSM
Population affect and legitimacy pressure
8CM
Unit-level felt trust states as executable engineering specifications.
Each layer inherits constraints from the layers above it. The stack is generative: it produces predictions about how trust will behave under specific conditions.
The enhanced 8CM layer completes the stack as a true engineering terminal object. With primitive-level decomposition, dual-spectrum measurement (trust + anti-trust), and direct binding to thermodynamic mechanisms, 8CM transforms from abstract emotion labels into executable affective engineering specifications that can be deployed in operational contexts.
Empirical Performance Claims
The stack is instantiated across multiple lines of work published by Trustable Press, as well as the Orchard Economics investment thesis and financial model.
These works apply the same substrate as predictive diagnostics, models, and frameworks in live market conditions. Where they are deployed operationally, the claim is that they deliver predicted results with high confidence.
External reviews, audits, and market outcomes should be treated as evidence about specific instantiations, not as prerequisites for defining the model.
A Shared Substrate for Trust Work
This document specifies the trust thermodynamics kernel and its higher layers as a shared substrate that all Trustable Press are written on top of. It preserves provenance, makes dependencies explicit, and provides a stable primer for readers, reviewers, and secondary practitioners working within Epistemic Field Theory.
The generative model sees trust as a thermodynamic process with measurable energy landscapes, motion regimes, charge carriers, friction laws, field configurations, population-level pressure signatures, and unit-level engineering specifications.
Every work in the Trustable corpus inherits from this stack. Understanding the stack means understanding how trust moves, where it settles, and why it stabilizes in certain configurations rather than others.