Definition
The principle that an institution's obligations to remain open to challenge and revisable grow with its capacity to classify, monitor, automate, enforce, and scale. The more a system can see, sort, act on, and impose its categories, the stronger the counterweights must be.
It matters because capacity is not neutral. A system that can classify at scale can misclassify at scale, and a system that can enforce quickly can commit quickly. Restraint is the obligation side of capability overhang: capability may expand only as fast as the correction obligation that checks it. It is why earned autonomy is conditional rather than cumulative, and it makes Law XI's burden normative: every expansion of capacity carries a proportional expansion of the capacity to answer challenges and to revise.
Tests that show it is in place
- Each expansion of classification, monitoring, or enforcement capacity is paired with a stated increase in the capacity to answer challenges and to revise.
- Correction capacity grows with authority, and the pairing is recorded rather than asserted.
- A capability that outruns its correction capacity is refused admission or narrowed, not shipped and apologized for later.
Evidence to keep
- Artifact: A grant whose scope expansion is paired with a corresponding correction-capacity expansion, recorded in the same transition.
- Behavior: A capability refused or narrowed because its correction capacity was not yet provisioned.
- Metric: Ratio of correction capacity to granted authority, required non-decreasing across expansions.
References
- Capability overhang · Term
- Earned autonomy · Term
- Correction obligation · Term