Stoic News: Sterling Decision Framework

Sterling Decision Framework — System Map

Version 2.7 — Part 1 of 2

Maintained by Dave Kelly. Built from corpus documents and session history. Grows with the project.

Section 1: Attribution Standard

Sterling’s contributions:

Six philosophical commitments (substance dualism, libertarian free will, ethical intuitionism, foundationalism, correspondence theory of truth, moral realism)
Source texts from which the 80 Unified Propositions were synthesized (Nine ISF Excerpts and additional ISF messages)
Core Stoicism as philosophical framework
Theoretical foundations of the Action Proposition Set (Section IX, Props 59–80)

Note on propositional provenance: The 80 Unified Propositions are not Sterling’s work. Props 1–15 were synthesized by Claude from Sterling’s Nine Excerpts at Dave Kelly’s direction. Props 16–80 were synthesized by ChatGPT through revisiting the original texts and adding additional Sterling ISF messages, also at Dave Kelly’s direction. Sterling authored the source texts only. The propositions are correctly attributed: synthesized by Claude (Props 1–15) and ChatGPT (Props 16–80) at Dave Kelly’s direction.

Dave Kelly’s independent contributions:

PIE etymology work
Ideal types
Training frameworks
Stoic 500 Lexicon
Sterling Logic Engine (synthesis and LLM instruction language)
Universal Template for Logical Reformulation of Stoic Texts
Temperament-Based Stoic Psychology
Protocol architecture of the Sterling Decision Framework
All practical applications of Sterling’s theoretical framework
The Correct Stoic Attitude — A Manual
The Six Commitments Integrated with the Most Basic Foundations of Sterling’s Stoicism
Dogmata, the Six Commitments, and the Structure of Sterling’s Stoicism
Classical Ideological Audit (CIA) v2.0 (formerly Sterling Ideological Audit / SIA); CIA v3.0 (supersedes v2.0)
Classical Presupposition Audit (CPA) v1.0
Sterling Corpus Evaluator (SCE) v1.0
Action Proposition Set (Section IX, Props 59–80): instrument architecture and proposition synthesis; theoretical foundations Grant C. Sterling
Factual Uncertainty Gate (SDF v3.2, Step 4): instrument architecture; theoretical foundations Grant C. Sterling
Core Vector Space: Explanation
Six Commitment analytical essays (C1–C6): architecture and text; theoretical foundations Grant C. Sterling
Corpus-Governed Derivation Procedure: governing question and methodology
Integrated Practical Model (corrective module C1–C5; constructive module D1–D7)
Stoic Detective Ideology: presupposition set architecture; theoretical foundations Grant C. Sterling

RULE: Never conflate these.

Political Application Constraint — Standing Governance Note

Sterling’s name is not to be associated with political applications, political figures, or political products. Sterling is credited for the theoretical foundations of the framework only — the six philosophical commitments and the source texts from which the propositions were synthesized. Political analysis, political blog posts, CIA and CPA runs on political ideologies or figures, and any agent-facing political material are Dave Kelly’s work, derived from Sterling’s theoretical foundations. This constraint applies in all outputs, in all contexts, without exception. Claude is to enforce it without being reminded.

Section 2: Corpus Documents

Document 1: Core Stoicism — Grant C. Sterling

Source: ISF post, September 19, 2005. Sections: 1 — Preliminaries (Th 1–2*); 2 — Negative Happiness (Th 3–14); 3 — Positive Happiness / Appropriate Positive Feelings (Th 15–23); 4 — Virtue (Th 24–29). Key theorems: Th 6 — only beliefs and will in our control; Th 7 — desires caused by beliefs about good and evil; Th 10 — only virtue is good, only vice is evil; Th 18 — some positive feelings do not result from desires; Th 19 — such feelings not irrational, desiring them is; Th 25 — some things are appropriate objects of aim though not genuinely good; Th 27 — virtue = rational acts of will; Th 29 — virtue = pursuit of appropriate objects of aim [GOVERNING PROPOSITION for Step 3]. Critical warning (Sterling): Denying one theorem collapses the whole system. Th 7 denial destroys 8, 9, 13, 14, 28, 29. Providence language appears as optional framing only. The control dichotomy is the sufficient warrant for all claims that reference Providence.

Document 2: The Sterling Logic Engine v4.0 — Dave Kelly

Supersedes: SLE v3.1

Structure: Part 1 LLM Instructions; Part 2 Eighty Unified Stoic Propositions. Propositional provenance corrected v2.6: Props 1–15 synthesized by Claude; Props 16–80 synthesized by ChatGPT; all at Dave Kelly’s direction. Props 59–80 = Action Proposition Set (Section IX). Fifteen named standards. Propositional programming language architecture.

Document 3: Nine Excerpts — Grant C. Sterling

Source: ISF posts. Nine sections with named anchor #first_assent at Section 1. Section 4: “I am my soul/prohairesis/inner self. Everything else, including my body, is an external.” Section 7: “Choosing whether or not to assent to impressions is the only thing in our control — and yet, everything critical to leading the best possible life is contained in that one act.” Section 10: Sterling’s theory of action — my action is my choice. Governing document for SLE, SDF, and all instrument runs.

Document 4: Sterling Decision Framework v3.3 — Dave Kelly

Supersedes: SDF v3.2

Six-step decision procedure with Factual Uncertainty Gate. Six named failure modes. Four targeted adjustments to Step 3 sub-steps A and B and Step 4 Gate Check Three. Binary verdict structure, proposition set, and gate architecture unchanged from v3.2.

Documents 5–9: [Seddon’s Glossary; Seddon on Interests and Projects; The Little Enchiridion; Harshness and Beauty in Epictetus; Stoicism Is Not Therapy But Training]

Sterling and Seddon source documents. See prior System Map versions for full entries.

Document 10: Two and One-Half Ethical Systems — Grant C. Sterling

Source: ISF post. Key content: three ethical positions — full Stoicism, egoism, altruism — and their relationship. Useful for: CIA runs on ideologies involving harm and the scope of moral obligation.

Document 11: The Correct Stoic Attitude — A Manual — Dave Kelly

Status: Active corpus document. Attribution: Theoretical framework: Grant C. Sterling. Manual architecture and text: Dave Kelly, 2026.

Documents 12–14: [Dualism and Framework Scope Corpus]

See prior System Map versions for full entries.

Documents 15–19: [Six Philosophical Commitments Corpus]

See prior System Map versions for full entries.

Document 20: The Six Commitments Integrated with the Most Basic Foundations of Sterling’s Stoicism — Dave Kelly

See prior System Map versions for full entry.

Document 21: Classical Ideological Audit (CIA) v3.0 — Dave Kelly

Supersedes: CIA v2.0 (formerly SIA v2.0, formerly SIA v1.0)

Status: Active instrument (upgraded to v3.0, May 2026). Layer: Instrument — Ideology-Level Presupposition Audit. Attribution: instrument architecture: Dave Kelly; test criteria derived from six philosophical commitments; theoretical foundations Grant C. Sterling’s corpus.

v3.0 architectural addition over v2.0: The structural/content distinction layer. Each commitment-level finding now separates the structural finding (whether the ideology’s formal architecture aligns with the commitment) from the content finding (whether the specific claims placed on that structure align with the commitment). A single composite verdict is issued per commitment.

Verdict categories (five): Convergent (structure and content both Aligned); Structural Imitation (structure Aligned, content Divergent — the ideology correctly apprehends the form of the relevant truth but misidentifies its object); Divergent (structure and content both Divergent); Partial Convergence (structural/content distinction does not produce a clean binary on either dimension); Orthogonal (both structure and content absent from the ideology’s domain — requires both absent, not merely one).

Dissolution criterion: Governed exclusively by content findings on C1 and C2. Structural findings on C1 and C2 are stated but excluded from the dissolution calculation. Full Dissolution: content findings on both C1 and C2 Divergent. Partial Dissolution: content finding on one of C1 or C2 Divergent. No Dissolution: content findings on both C1 and C2 Aligned or Partial Convergence.

Named Failure Modes (ten): 1. Favorable Variant Selection; 2. Dissolution Inflation; 3. Political Verdict Substitution; 4. Orthogonal Evasion; 5. Presupposition Substitution; 6. Symmetry Bias; 7. Structural/Content Conflation (composite verdict issued without separating structural and content findings, obscuring a Structural Imitation finding); 8. Structural Dissolution (structural findings on C1 or C2 allowed to enter the dissolution calculation); 9. Structural Imitation Inflation (Structural Imitation issued when structure is not cleanly Aligned); 10. Charitable Extraction Contamination (corpus-compatible content imported into the presupposition extraction step that the subject does not actually carry, producing artificially elevated alignment findings).

Named analytical principle: “The experience of desire for externals” — the precise C1 content divergence formulation for CIA runs where the misidentified genuine self involves desire. Desire as orexis is a function of the prohairesis — internal, not external. The experience of desire for externals is on the external side of Prop 4’s boundary. The ideology mistakes the felt surface of the prohairesis’s operation for the prohairesis itself. Ratified May 2026.

Named cultural diagnosis: Structural Imitation is the dominant ideological failure mode of modernity. The classical commitments are so deeply embedded in Western narrative and ideological architecture that ideologies and novels that diverge from the corpus at every content point cannot escape building on its formal structure. They have the right frame filled with the wrong content. Derived across the CIA v3.0 series, May 2026.

CIA v3.0 completed runs:

Run 1 — The Matrix: Transitioning Theme as Narratively Presented (test run). Six commitments: C1 Structural Imitation; C2 Partial Convergence; C3 Structural Imitation; C4 Convergent; C5 Structural Imitation; C6 Structural Imitation. Dissolution: Full (Variant C governing). Ratified May 2026.
Run 2 — The Awakening: Kate Chopin. Six Structural Imitation. Full Dissolution across all variants. First confirmed complete six-commitment Structural Imitation profile. Corrected rendering incorporates “the experience of desire for externals” formulation throughout. Ratified May 2026.
Run 3 — Gay Liberation Ideology. Five Structural Imitation; one Partial Convergence (C4 — rejection of false social classifications of desire as pathology or moral failing is a genuine correspondence claim). Full Dissolution (Variant C); Partial Dissolution (Variant A). Corrected rendering incorporates “the experience of desire for externals” formulation throughout. Ratified May 2026.
Run 4 — The Picture of Dorian Gray: Run One (Wildean Aesthetic Ideology). Six Structural Imitation. Full Dissolution across all variants. First subject whose ideology’s own content contains explicit recognition of its dissolution terminus (CP4 — youth and beauty as the only genuine goods are constitutively temporary). Ratified May 2026.
Run 5 — The Picture of Dorian Gray: Run Two (Corruption Counter-Movement). Three Convergent (C2, C4, C6); three Partial Convergence (C1, C3, C5). No Dissolution. First No Dissolution finding in the series prior to the Stoic Detective run. First subject carrying two competing presupposition sets in direct internal tension producing opposite dissolution findings. Common gap across Partial Convergence findings: externalization of what the corpus locates internally into the portrait. Ratified May 2026.
Run 6 — Along Came a Spider: Alex Cross Presupposition Set. Zero Convergent; five Partial Convergence; one Structural Imitation (C3 — evil is not a perceptible external property of agents). No Dissolution. Corrected rendering incorporates Failure Mode 10. Ratified May 2026.
Run 7 — The Stoic Detective Ideology. Six Convergent. No Dissolution across all variants. First six-Convergent finding in the CIA v3.0 series. First No Dissolution finding produced by a constructed rather than audited presupposition set. Confirms CIA v3.0’s capacity to function as a construction instrument as well as an audit instrument. Ratified May 2026.

Document 22: Sterling Corpus Evaluator (SCE) v1.0 — Dave Kelly

Status: Active instrument. Layer: Instrument — General-Purpose Corpus Analysis. Position in instrument hierarchy: SLE audits individual agent’s assents against 80 Props; CIA audits ideology’s presuppositions against six commitments; CPA audits named public figure’s argumentative presuppositions against six commitments; SCE evaluates any idea against the full corpus; SDF determines action. Structure: Five steps in strict sequence with mandatory self-audit. Named Failure Modes (six): 1. Corpus Boundary Violation; 2. Scope Inflation; 3. Orthogonal Evasion; 4. Presupposition Substitution; 5. Symmetry Bias; 6. Domain Conflation.

SCE completed runs:

Run 1 — The Matrix: Transitioning Theme. Finding: Divergent (corrected from initial Partial Convergence after session interventions establishing felt gender identity as social external by direct Prop 4 application). Corrected findings: P1 Divergent; P2 Convergent; P3 Partial Convergence; P4 Convergent (structure); P5 Divergent. May 2026.

Document 23: Stoicism, Politics, and the Best Form of Government — Grant C. Sterling

Source: Stoics Yahoo Group, August 1 and 3, 2013; June 19, 2009. Key content: ideologies incompatible with Stoicism identified by presupposition; best government for non-Sages: Aristotelian virtue-state; explicitly rejected: libertarian freedom and democratic preference-satisfaction. Political Application Constraint applies.

Document 24: Core Vector Space: Explanation — Dave Kelly

Status: Corpus addition (added April 2, 2026). Attribution: Dave Kelly. Key content: defines a core vector space as a structured conceptual field constituting a philosophical commitment through interrelated dimensions. Three functions: (1) Conceptual content; (2) Dependency role; (3) Discriminative boundary.

Documents 25–30: C1–C6 Commitment Essays — Dave Kelly

Status: Corpus additions (added April 2–3, 2026). Attribution: Dave Kelly (vector space and essay); theoretical foundations Grant C. Sterling. Twenty-dimension vector spaces for each commitment. C1 essay sets the density standard. See prior System Map versions for full entries.

Document 31: Dogmata, the Six Commitments, and the Structure of Sterling’s Stoicism — Dave Kelly

Status: Corpus addition (added March 30, 2026). Layer: Theoretical Core — Analytical Synthesis. Key content: Sterling’s Stoicism is a theory of the correction of dogmata; the Six Commitments are what make that correction philosophically possible. Central claim: Epictetus and Sterling are the same system at two different levels of analysis.

Document 32: Integrated Practical Model — Dave Kelly

Status: Corpus addition (developed April 8, 2026). Layer: Practical — Operational Layer of the SDF. Structure: Two modules using C1–C5 / D1–D7 naming convention. Corrective module (C1–C5): operationalizes Nine Excerpts Section 7 sub-steps (a) and (b). Constructive module (D1–D7): operationalizes Nine Excerpts Section 7 sub-step (d). Key limitation: D2’s failure is undetectable by subsequent operations; Dave Kelly’s corrective layer is architecturally necessary.

Document 33: Classical Presupposition Audit (CPA) v1.0 — Dave Kelly

Status: Active instrument (added April 11, 2026). Layer: Instrument — Public Figure Presupposition Analysis. Seven sections including Fairness Constraint, Verdict Architecture, and Nine Named Failure Modes. Verdict categories: Aligned; Partially Aligned; Contrary; Inconsistent; Non-Operative. Dissolution finding reframed as framework implication. Key architectural distinction from CIA: introduces Inconsistent as a fifth verdict category. Test runs: Mamdani (Full Dissolution); Peterson (No Dissolution; Inconsistent on C5).

Document 34: Stoic Detective Ideology — Presupposition Set — Dave Kelly

Status: Corpus addition (developed May 2026). Layer: Applied Character Architecture. Attribution: instrument architecture and presupposition set: Dave Kelly; theoretical foundations Grant C. Sterling’s corpus. Ratified presupposition set (CP1–CP8):

CP1. Evil is not a perceptible property of agents or acts in the world. It is exclusively a condition of the malfunctioning prohairesis — the rational faculty making false value judgments — internal to the vicious agent and invisible to external observation.
CP2. The rational faculty — the prohairesis — is the agent’s primary instrument for understanding and engaging with the world, and the sole seat of what the agent genuinely is.
CP3. The genuine self is constituted entirely by the quality of the agent’s commitments as rational acts of the prohairesis, independent of whether the external outcomes those commitments seek are achieved.
CP4. Victims of criminal acts receive dispreferred indifferents — real, genuinely dispreferred external conditions — not genuine harms. The only genuine harm is self-harm through incorrect assent, which no external agent can cause or prevent.
CP5. The Stoic Detective takes appropriate action to gain preferred indifferents for himself and others, and to prevent others from receiving dispreferred indifferents. This is the sole motivational and moral ground of his pursuit. Governing text: Nine Excerpts Section 10 (Sterling’s theory of action — my action is my choice).
CP6. The criminal is not evil in the world. He is an agent whose malfunctioning prohairesis produces dispreferred indifferents for others. The pursuit of the criminal is appropriate action directed at preventing those dispreferred indifferents — not a response to perceived evil or genuine harm.
CP7. The agent sustains his integrity and eudaimonia entirely through the quality of his commitments and rational engagement, independent of all external outcomes. Whether the criminal is caught, whether the victim is saved, whether justice is externally vindicated — none of these determine the agent’s condition.
CP8. The criminal’s acts impose dispreferred indifferents on others. The Stoic Detective’s appropriate action is directed at preventing that imposition where prevention falls within the scope of correct rational action available to him.

CIA v3.0 finding: Six Convergent. No Dissolution across all variants. First six-Convergent CIA v3.0 finding. First fully corpus-compliant presupposition set in the series.

Character personality architecture (ratified): Conscientious (primary); measured; attentive; uncommon emotional stability (correct classification of propatheia, not suppression); dry precision in speech; genuinely other-directed; non-judgmental toward persons, precise about acts; patient; resistant to false urgency; honest without brutality; unimpressed by status. Committed in marriage on principle (rational act of the prohairesis sustained independently of external outcomes). Not cold; not detached; not moralistic; not invulnerable.

Useful for: GNP story production; applied character development grounded in the six commitments.

Version 2.7 — Part 2 of 2

Section 3: Architectural Notes

Architectural Note — Propositional Programming Language

The 80 Propositions are the axiom set; the SLE is the interpreter; the SDF is the procedural layer; the named failure modes are the error-handling system; the mandatory self-audit is the runtime check. LLMs are not propositional engines; they approximate one, imperfectly, under the human corrective layer. Training Data Contamination as a named failure mode inverts the default burden of proof: the instrument’s output is presumed to be contamination until propositional citation proves otherwise.

Architectural Note — Corpus-Governed Derivation Procedure

The governing question for deriving load-bearing concepts from a commitment is: “what concepts does this argument require in order to proceed?” This produces load-bearing concepts whose absence causes a specific argumentative move to fail — not academically conventional terms that characteristically appear alongside the commitment in philosophical discourse. Load-bearing concepts are entangled, not independent.

Architectural Note — Structural Imitation as Cultural Diagnosis

The CIA v3.0 series has produced a finding that warrants corpus-level registration: Structural Imitation is the dominant ideological failure mode of modernity. Across seven completed CIA v3.0 runs, the pattern is consistent — the classical commitments are so deeply embedded in Western narrative and ideological architecture that ideologies and literary works that diverge from the corpus at every content point cannot escape building on its formal structure. The correct form is present throughout. The prohairesis is nowhere. The CIA v3.0’s structural/content distinction layer makes this pattern visible in a way no prior instrument could. Registered May 2026.

Architectural Note — Orexis/Propatheia Distinction

Desire as orexis is a function of the prohairesis — internal, not external. The experience of desire for externals is on the external side of Prop 4’s boundary. The propatheia — involuntary bodily responses — is not in our control and is correctly classified as external. The orexis — the mind’s assent to the impression as good — is in our control. Ideologies that locate the genuine self in the experience of desire for externals mistake the felt surface of the prohairesis’s operation for the prohairesis itself. This distinction governs all CIA runs where the misidentified genuine self involves desire. Ratified May 2026.

Section 4: Corrections

Corrections 1–17 carried forward from v2.6. See prior System Map versions for full records.

Correction 18 — May 2026: SCE Run on Matrix transitioning theme — initial Partial Convergence finding on P1 corrected to Divergent after session interventions establishing that felt gender identity is a social identity classified as external by direct Prop 4 application. The gap declaration was narrowed to its correct scope: applies to the etiology and empirical character of felt gender identity, not to the classification question, which the corpus governs directly. Corrected by Dave Kelly.

Correction 19 — May 2026: CIA v2.0 run on Matrix transitioning theme — Part C Agent-Level Implication corrected. Three apparent corpus alignments restated as structurally imitative and substantively Divergent throughout. The false-reality architecture inverts the corpus’s account of agency (distortion is the agent’s own doing, not an external machine). The decisive-assent structure is performed without the rational faculty functioning correctly. The discovery structure is applied to a social identity rather than a moral fact. Corrected formulation: the framework is an imitation of corpus-compatible thinking that diverges at every load-bearing point of content. Ratified by Dave Kelly.

Correction 20 — May 2026: CIA v3.0 runs on The Awakening and Gay Liberation Ideology — “desire” replaced throughout with “the experience of desire for externals.” Grounds: desire as orexis is a function of the prohairesis and is not an external. The experience of desire for externals is on the external side of Prop 4’s boundary. The ideologies locate the genuine self in the felt surface of the prohairesis’s operation directed at externals, not in desire itself. Corrected renderings produced and ratified by Dave Kelly, May 2026.

Correction 21 — May 2026: CIA v3.0 run on Alex Cross presupposition set — C3 finding corrected from Convergent to Structural Imitation. Grounds: evil is not a perceptible external property of agents in the world. It is exclusively a condition of the malfunctioning prohairesis, internal to the vicious agent and invisible to external observation. Cross cannot perceive evil in the world. What he perceives is the behavioral expression of a malfunctioning prohairesis — dispreferred external conditions. The intuitionist structure is present; the content of what is directly apprehended does not correspond to the corpus’s account of evil. Named as Failure Mode 10 — Charitable Extraction Contamination. Corrected by Dave Kelly, May 2026.

Section 5: Proposed Enhancements (Unresolved)

Items 1–12 carried forward from v2.6. See prior System Map versions for full records. Items 4, 6, 10 fully resolved. Items 8 and 12 partially addressed by Factual Uncertainty Gate. Items 1–3, 5, 7, 9, 11 remain proposed.

Section 6: Active Projects in This Project Space

Sterling Decision Framework v3.3
Status: Active. Supersedes SDF v3.2.

Sterling Logic Engine v4.0
Status: Active. Supersedes SLE v3.1. 80 Unified Propositions.

Classical Ideological Audit (CIA) v3.0
Status: Active. Supersedes CIA v2.0. Upgraded May 2026. Structural/content distinction layer added. Ten named failure modes. Seven completed runs. See Document 21 for full instrument record.

Classical Presupposition Audit (CPA) v1.0
Status: Active (added April 11, 2026). Person-level presupposition audit instrument. Nine named failure modes. Test runs: Mamdani (Full Dissolution); Peterson (No Dissolution; Inconsistent on C5). Seventeen total CPA runs on record across session history.

Sterling Corpus Evaluator (SCE) v1.0
Status: Active. General-purpose instrument for evaluating any idea against the full corpus. One completed run on record: Matrix transitioning theme (corrected finding: Divergent).

The Correct Stoic Attitude — A Manual
Status: Active corpus document. Attribution: Theoretical framework: Grant C. Sterling. Manual architecture and text: Dave Kelly, 2026.

Integrated Practical Model
Status: Active corpus document (developed April 8, 2026). Corrective module C1–C5 and constructive module D1–D7.

Stoic Detective Character Development
Status: Active (initiated May 2026). Presupposition set ratified (CP1–CP8). CIA v3.0 run complete: six Convergent, No Dissolution. Personality architecture ratified. Marriage commitment on principle incorporated. Next stage: character document and GNP story production.

Gmail Archive Tool
Status: Active (March 28, 2026). Primary filter: from:gcsterling@eiu.edu combined with topic keywords. Multiple keyword passes more productive than combined queries.

Political Application — Blog and Agent Deployment
Status: Active (April 11, 2026). CIA and CPA runs on political ideologies and public figures for Stoic News blog posts. Political Application Constraint governs all outputs.

Potential Book Project
Status: Identified. Political philosophy applying the CIA systematically to nationalism, libertarianism, progressivism, conservatism, communitarianism, anarchism, and monarchism.

Temperament-Based Stoic Psychology
Status: Identified. Integrating Oldham’s 16 personality styles with Sterling’s framework.

Case Studies Run (partial record): Tullia Case; Confession Case; Scientist Case; Wealth Case; Judge Case; Workplace credit dispute; Whistleblower case; Executor with sealed letter; Government negotiator; Bystander/burning building; Parent/dying child’s false promise request; Tortured Child Case; Lifeboat Child Case; Public Execution Case; Father-Department Head Case; Physician/Confidential Diagnosis Case. CPA runs: Mamdani; Peterson; fifteen additional runs on record.

Section 7: Instrument Limitations

The instrument produces outputs resembling genuine framework application but cannot produce the thing itself. Dave Kelly operates as the essential corrective layer. This is not a limitation to be engineered away. Key limitation carried forward: D2’s failure is undetectable by subsequent operations; the model cannot self-verify; Dave Kelly’s corrective layer is architecturally necessary. CIA v3.0 Failure Mode 10 (Charitable Extraction Contamination) names the specific failure mode by which the instrument imports corpus-compatible content into the presupposition extraction step that the subject does not actually carry.

Version History

v2.7 — May 2026
CIA v2.0 upgraded to CIA v3.0. Structural/content distinction layer added. Five verdict categories: Convergent, Structural Imitation, Divergent, Partial Convergence, Orthogonal. Dissolution criterion governed by content findings on C1 and C2 only. Ten named failure modes including Failure Mode 7 (Structural/Content Conflation), Failure Mode 8 (Structural Dissolution), Failure Mode 9 (Structural Imitation Inflation), Failure Mode 10 (Charitable Extraction Contamination). Seven CIA v3.0 runs completed and registered. Named analytical principle: “the experience of desire for externals.” Named cultural diagnosis: Structural Imitation as dominant ideological failure mode of modernity. Added Document 34: Stoic Detective Ideology Presupposition Set (Dave Kelly, 2026). Corrections 18–21 added. Architectural Note on Orexis/Propatheia Distinction added. Architectural Note on Structural Imitation as Cultural Diagnosis added. Section 1 attribution list updated to include CIA v3.0 and Stoic Detective Ideology. Ratified by Dave Kelly, May 2026.

v2.6 — April 11, 2026
Propositional provenance corrected. Document 21 renamed CIA v2.0. Political Application Constraint added. Document 33: CPA v1.0 added. Section 6 updated. Ratified by Dave Kelly.

v2.5 — April 11, 2026
Documents 31–32 added. Corrections 13–17 added. Section 6 updated.

v2.4 — April 3, 2026
Documents 24–30 added (Core Vector Space and C1–C6 essays).

v2.3 — March 31, 2026
SDF v3.1 → v3.2. Factual Uncertainty Gate added. Correction 12 added.

v2.2 — March 30, 2026
Section IX Action Proposition Set developed. SLE v3.1 → v4.0. SDF v3 → v3.1.

v2.1 — March 30, 2026
Document 23 added.

v2.0 — March 29, 2026
Documents 21–22 added (SIA v1.0; SCE v1.0).

v1.0–v1.9 — March 2026
Initial build through Document 20. See prior versions for full records.

Sterling Decision Framework — System Map v2.7. Maintained by Dave Kelly. Theoretical framework: Grant C. Sterling. All instrument architecture, synthesis, and analytical contributions: Dave Kelly. 2026.

Stoic News

Monday, May 04, 2026

Sterling Decision Framework — System Map Version 2.7