Glossary entry

Decision Threshold

Glossary entry in Governance & power. Definitions, checks, and evidence for Decision Threshold.

Quick takeaways

The score, cut-off, or confidence floor that decides whether an action runs unattended, goes to a person, or is refused.

Definition

The score, cut-off, or confidence floor that decides whether an action runs unattended, goes to a person, or is refused. In a deployment gated by a classifier or a typed decision model, the threshold is where authority is conferred: the model proposes, and the number decides what the institution lets it do.

It matters because thresholds are usually held as configuration, tuned once against one model version and never recorded as a decision. STD-08 §2.6 holds a decision threshold as a policy record whose assumptions name the labelled cases, model version, question schema, and option order it was set against, with a review trigger on any change to them. Where the threshold also chooses what reaches a reviewer, it is part of the intervention specification.

StructuralMeasurable

Scale: Organizational · Phases: Design, Deployment, Audit · Measurability: Fully measurable · Maturity: Core concept

Scope
H. Governance & power. Structures that decide who holds authority, on what grant and for how long, and who can intervene.
Genealogy
Gives Law III an object at the point where typed decision models locate authority: the evidence for a threshold is the labelled data and the model version it was set against, and it decays when either changes.

Adjacent terms

Policy Record Review Trigger Authority Grant Intervention Specification

Related concepts

Also tagged: Structural

Ethotechnics Moral Behavior (of Systems) Ethical Load Path Ethotechnic Audit Conviviality Ethotechnic Maturity

Also tagged: Measurable

Correction Capacity Dependency State Exposure Score Substitution Cost Evaluation Layer Falsified Denominator

References

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

Version

v1.13.0

Last updated

Sep 22, 2026

DOI

Pending Zenodo deposit

APA

Ethotechnics Institute Research Team. (2026). Decision Threshold. Ethotechnics glossary. https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/decision-threshold

MLA

Ethotechnics Institute Research Team. "Decision Threshold." Ethotechnics glossary, 2026, https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/decision-threshold.

Chicago

Ethotechnics Institute Research Team. "Decision Threshold." Ethotechnics glossary. Sep 22, 2026. https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/decision-threshold.

BibTeX

@misc{glossary_decision-threshold,
  title={Decision Threshold},
  author={Ethotechnics Institute Research Team},
  year={2026},
  howpublished={Ethotechnics glossary},
  url={https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/decision-threshold},
  version={v1.13.0}
}

RIS

TY  - WEB
TI  - Decision Threshold
AU  - Ethotechnics Institute Research Team
PY  - 2026
UR  - https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/decision-threshold
ER  -

Scholarly metadata

Authorship

Contact: research@ethotechnics.org

Publication details

  • Published: Dec 3, 2025
  • Last updated: Sep 22, 2026
  • Version: v1.13.0
  • 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

  • v1.13.0 · 2026-09-22 — Rewrote category descriptions and scope notes to the current framing, replaced vague or promotional definitions in 89 entries and 109 short definitions, removed unsourced adoption and effect claims, and cut filler words and redundant sentences from 38 entries and 20 short definitions. No term was added, removed, or renamed.
  • v1.12.0 · 2026-09-22 — Added Typed Decision Model and Confidence-Gated Execution, cross-linked to the worked example of a decision-model gate on refunds.
  • v1.11.0 · 2026-09-22 — Added Decision Threshold, Shaping Hop, and Reason Substitution: the places typed decision models locate authority, shape decisions without making them, and separate the reason from the decision.
  • v1.10.0 · 2026-09-19 — Promoted 64 orphaned short definitions to full canonical entries across core concepts, governance, decision states, and anti-patterns, and removed three redundant short definitions (procedural-realism, intake-cinema, legibility-illegibility).
  • v1.9.0 · 2026-09-19 — Added Feedback Proximity, Asymmetric-Capacity Restraint, Adaptive Capacity, Compensatory Adaptation, and Corrective Power, aligned the short definition of Ethotechnics with its canonical authority-and-correction framing, and refreshed the glossary's category scaffolding off the earlier moral-system vocabulary.
  • v1.8.0 · 2026-09-19 — Added Insulation, the unifying failure mode of the framework: whatever stops the consequences of institutional decisions from traveling back to those who can revise the generating rules, with its channels, its good and bad forms, and its self-ratifying loop.
  • 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.