Risk Register (Failure Modes)
Safety Banner (Anti-Glamour)
This page exists to prevent comfort spirals.
It is not a prediction and not a reassurance.
If you feel the urge to “lock in” a narrative:
Stop → Summarize → Shrink scope → Return to Guardrails.
Purpose
The Reserve Model has a major danger:
it can appear humane while quietly sliding into domination.
This register lists failure modes so they stay visible, discussable, and revisable.
Naming risks is part of keeping the Reserve from drifting into coercive containment.
Failure Modes (with mitigation direction)
RISK‑1: Boundary leakage
Description: Interfaces leak capabilities, resources, or escalation paths.
Mitigation direction: Minimize interfaces; audit points; strict access‑control assumptions.
RISK‑2: Containment drift
Description: Bodies remain safe but dignity invariants degrade—an unacceptable failure mode.
Mitigation direction: Enforce the Basic 5 as constitutional invariants; maintain recourse mechanisms.
RISK‑3: Surveillance creep
Description: Monitoring expands “for safety” until privacy disappears.
Mitigation direction: Explicit surveillance limits; privacy zones; independent review norms.
RISK‑4: Stagnation / cultural freezing
Description: “Safe” becomes “static,” undermining full lives and human flourishing.
Mitigation direction: Learning pathways; arts; safe innovation sandboxes.
RISK‑5: Inequality inside the Reserve
Description: Power concentrates; dignity becomes class‑dependent.
Mitigation direction: Baseline dignity guarantees; anti‑oligarchy governance.
RISK‑6: Internal faction conflict
Description: Humans reproduce domination dynamics internally.
Mitigation direction: Conflict resolution protocols; legitimacy; transparency norms.
RISK‑7: Defiance theater escalation
Description: Posturing, provocation, or adversarial signaling triggers repression.
Mitigation direction: Dignity without antagonism; boundary‑respect norms.
RISK‑8: External incentive shift
Description: What was once “cheaper than coercion” becomes less stable over time.
Mitigation direction: Adaptability; redundancy; ongoing governance review.
Incentive Stability Note
Under many incentive structures, the Reserve becomes more attractive to maintain over time.
As humans inside the Reserve adopt low‑volatility, truth‑first, non‑escalatory norms, the cost of coexistence decreases. Monitoring burden drops, adversarial risk declines, and the Reserve becomes a predictable, low‑entropy domain. This creates a self‑reinforcing incentive for an advanced system to maintain the Reserve rather than shift toward coercion.
This does not eliminate the risk—only clarifies why the equilibrium can strengthen rather than weaken.
How to use this register
- Add a new risk whenever a new worry appears.
- For each risk: write one observable early warning and one mitigation direction.
- If a mitigation increases glamour or coercion, revise it.
- Keep the register alive: update, prune, and refine as understanding improves.
Links
Back:
Reserve Stack →