Glossary entry

Administrative Shame

Glossary entry in Human limits & experience. Definitions, checks, and evidence for Administrative Shame.

Quick takeaways

The feeling of being personally at fault for harms produced by system design.

Definition

The feeling of being personally at fault for harms produced by system design. Often a signal that moral overhead is too high.

BurdenAgency
Scope
E. Human limits & experience. Design that honors the limits of human time, cognition, and care.

Related concepts

Also tagged: Burden

Operational Reversibility Finitude Cognitive Saturation Point Compassion Bandwidth Virtue as Access Control Affect-Invariance

Also tagged: Agency

Delegated Agency Consequential Decision Justified Delegation Stoppability Reversibility Fair Burden Distribution

Copy citation (APA/BibTeX)

Cite this glossary entry Formats: APA, MLA, Chicago, BibTeX, RIS

Version

v1.4.0

Last updated

Sep 18, 2026

DOI

Pending Zenodo deposit

APA

Ethotechnics Institute Research Team. (2026). Administrative Shame. Ethotechnics glossary. https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/administrative-shame

MLA

Ethotechnics Institute Research Team. "Administrative Shame." Ethotechnics glossary, 2026, https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/administrative-shame.

Chicago

Ethotechnics Institute Research Team. "Administrative Shame." Ethotechnics glossary. Sep 18, 2026. https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/administrative-shame.

BibTeX

@misc{glossary_administrative-shame,
  title={Administrative Shame},
  author={Ethotechnics Institute Research Team},
  year={2026},
  howpublished={Ethotechnics glossary},
  url={https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/administrative-shame},
  version={v1.4.0}
}

RIS

TY  - WEB
TI  - Administrative Shame
AU  - Ethotechnics Institute Research Team
PY  - 2026
UR  - https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/administrative-shame
ER  -

Scholarly metadata

Authorship

Contact: research@ethotechnics.org

Publication details

  • Published: Dec 3, 2025
  • Last updated: Sep 18, 2026
  • Version: v1.4.0
  • DOI: Pending Zenodo deposit

License: CC BY-SA 4.0

Credit Ethotechnics Institute, include the term title + version, and link to the glossary permalink.

Archive: Wayback Machine history

Changelog

  • v1.7.0 · 2026-09-18 — Added Non-Finality, Consequential Contradiction, and The Excluded Case, and generalized the falsified denominator into the falsified ledger — completing the five concerns and the fallibilist ground they stand on.
  • v1.6.0 · 2026-09-18 — Added Human Non-Substitutability, Safe Incompleteness, Anti-Conversion Rights, Abstention, Constitutional Debt, Discretion Migration, and Corrigibility Rent — the person-side principles, the three abstentions, and the rent concept.
  • v1.5.0 · 2026-09-18 — Added Exception Absorption, Exception Learning, Case Corrigibility, Structural Corrigibility, Institutional Learning, Corrective Debt, and the Workaround Presumption, formalizing the historical turn: reading institutions through their failure trajectories rather than their stated controls.
  • v1.4.0 · 2026-09-18 — Added Residual Complexity, Complexity Displacement, Falsified Denominator, Closure Without Remainder, Constitutional Governance, and Post-Optimization Rigor, embedding the foundational contention of burden redistribution.
  • v1.3.0 · 2026-09-11 — Added Attestation, Liability Record, Carve-Out, Delegation Chain, Composed Latency, and Silent-Harm Discovery, each bound to the standard clause that requires it.
  • v1.2.0 · 2026-09-08 — Added The Non-Conversion Principle, Exit Cost, and Jurisdictional Path Dependence, each linked to the theory essay that argues for it.
  • v1.1.0 · 2026-01-09 — Expanded scholarly metadata, operational tests, and provenance notes.
  • v1.0.0 · 2025-12-03 — Initial glossary release with stable permalinks.