Curve-Coherence

Doctrine Index candidate — Proxy-Metric Governance Spine

Definition

Curve-Coherence is the recurring archival condition in which a proxy metric becomes operationally privileged over the state it is meant to represent. Three characteristics define it:

1. Metric privilege. A legible proxy — a score, a curve, a status, a clearance rate — is treated as the operative fact, and the underlying condition becomes optional.
2. Behavioral adaptation. Subjects adjust their behavior to produce the expected proxy, because the proxy is what is verified and rewarded.
3. Proxy stability as evidence. Institutions begin treating a stable proxy as evidence that the underlying condition is sound. This can invert the relationship: the record looks healthy because the metric is smooth, not because the condition improved.

Origin: LLG-0811-EG (Empathegy Inflation Event), which documented smooth, upward-trending emotional curves being rated as healthier than jagged patterns regardless of reported content.

Scope

The doctrine applies where the cited records exhibit the condition:

The table records where the pattern was observed in the cohort. It is not a claim that every institution in a domain operates this way.

Boundaries

• Curve-coherence describes a formal pattern in metrics. It is not a total account of political economy, and it does not claim a single hidden logic governs all ten seams; it claims the seams exhibit a shared formal pattern.
• It is not an explanation of why any specific organization adopted a metric. Motive is not established by the archive.
• It does not prescribe remediation. The archive records conditions; it does not issue strategy, and it does not certify exit conditions.

Interaction with Other Doctrine

• LLG-0811-EG (Empathegy Inflation Event) — the documented origin of curve-coherence weighting.
• LLG-0451 (Jiggler-Empathegy Bridge) — the behavioral-adaptation layer: jigglers, quiet quitting, performative presence.
• LLG-0450 (Seam Survey) — the ten-seam evidence base.
• FREF-0430-EASP (Empathegy Aesthetic Survival Protocol) — the aesthetic analogue: surfaces that look correct are treated as operational.
• M-0226 (Serotonin Sam) — the curve mascot: measures graphability, not feeling.

Mascot Map

Known Limitations

• The archive's evidence is the cited cohort: one survey, one bridge, eleven mascots, and the prior Empathegy records. Counts, rates, and vendor-specific claims that appeared in the cohort were not retained with durable provenance; this doctrine does not depend on them.
• Curve-coherence is a formal pattern. Whether any given metric system exhibits it, and how severely, must be determined per record.
• The original draft described a total economic metabolism under the name "Curve-Coherence Capitalism." This doctrine does not assert one. The pattern is narrower: proxy stability displacing referent condition, and behavior adapting to the proxy.

Filing Guidance

File records under this doctrine when a record documents a proxy metric becoming operationally privileged over its referent, with evidence of behavioral adaptation or of proxy stability being treated as proof of condition.

Do not file records here merely because they involve a dashboard or a score. Absence of the pattern is a valid classification.

Filing Notes

Published to the public reference layer. Adjacent to the entropy framework and the taxonomy rules.

End of Doctrine FREF-0900-CCC.