Glossary entry

Dependency State

Glossary entry in System states & architectures. Definitions, checks, and evidence for Dependency State.

Quick takeaways

The current degree to which an institution relies on a system: who depends on it, what would break without it, what expertise has been retained, and how long substitution would…

Definition

The current degree to which an institution relies on a system: who depends on it, what would break without it, what expertise has been retained, and how long substitution would take. This is institutional dependence, meaning what the institution has come to rely on, and it is distinct from the record-level dependence in STD-07 Article III, which asks what a particular record rests on.

It matters because dependence quietly removes corrections from the menu. Tracked as a state, it can be scored through exposure score, read against the deployment's substrate profile, and countered by replenishing institutional reversibility. A dependence that also supplies the deployment's own evaluation is worse than its score suggests, which is why the record carries evaluation independence.

StructuralMeasurable

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

Scope
D. System states & architectures. Operational postures that determine how harm is absorbed—or amplified.
Genealogy
Gives Law V an object and distinguishes institutional dependence from the record dependence already governed by STD-07 Article III.

Adjacent terms

Exposure Score Institutional Reversibility Normalized Dependence Substitution Cost

Related concepts

Also tagged: Structural

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

Also tagged: Measurable

Correction Capacity Exposure Score Substitution Cost Evaluation Layer Falsified Denominator Challenge Density

References

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Version

v1.4.0

Last updated

Sep 18, 2026

DOI

Pending Zenodo deposit

APA

Ethotechnics Institute Research Team. (2026). Dependency State. Ethotechnics glossary. https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/dependency-state

MLA

Ethotechnics Institute Research Team. "Dependency State." Ethotechnics glossary, 2026, https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/dependency-state.

Chicago

Ethotechnics Institute Research Team. "Dependency State." Ethotechnics glossary. Sep 18, 2026. https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/dependency-state.

BibTeX

@misc{glossary_dependency-state,
  title={Dependency State},
  author={Ethotechnics Institute Research Team},
  year={2026},
  howpublished={Ethotechnics glossary},
  url={https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/dependency-state},
  version={v1.4.0}
}

RIS

TY  - WEB
TI  - Dependency State
AU  - Ethotechnics Institute Research Team
PY  - 2026
UR  - https://ethotechnics.org/glossary/dependency-state
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.