# NON_COLLAPSE_DOCTRINE -- Load-Bearing Render Rule

**Owner:** Epistemic Output Layer (S4). **Library:** Private RAM. **Consumers:** S4 only.

The three axes (evidence / transportability / decision) MUST be separately reasoned AND separately displayed. This doctrine is load-bearing: the dual-system audit premise collapses if the final artifact fuses them. Re-read this file at the start of Phase B and at the Phase E validation pass.

---

## 1. The Rule

**A single trust score across the three axes is THROWN. A binary pass/fail across the three axes is THROWN. A weighted average, harmonic mean, or any single-number summary is THROWN.**

The three axes are independent, reason about different properties, and carry different caveats. Collapsing them erases the reasons the caller needs to act well.

---

## 2. Why Non-Collapse Is Load-Bearing

- **Evidence** answers: "How strong is the empirical support for this claim in the studies we found?"
- **Transportability** answers: "Does this claim's support travel from study-context to decision-context?" -- with slot-substituted primitives by claim type.
- **Decision** answers: "Given the prior two, what action is defensible right now?"

These are three different questions. A single score tries to answer all three at once, and always answers badly. A reader who sees a "7/10" cannot tell whether the evidence was strong but non-transportable, or moderate-and-transportable, or weak-but-decisive-in-a-cheap-reversibility-regime. The collapse strips the action signal.

The Evaluator's audit of the RAM output uses the three axes independently. If the axes are collapsed, the Evaluator is auditing a summary, not the actual epistemic structure. The dual-system premise fails.

---

## 3. Anti-Example Catalog (all THROWN)

### 3.1 Executive-summary collapse
```
Overall Confidence: 7/10
Verdict: Strong
```
Thrown by E1. The number or label combines all three axes.

### 3.2 Ceremonial transportability
```
Transportability: moderate
```
With no slot, no rationale, no PIET-T or CERQual sub-scores, no decision-context delta. Thrown by E2. Also called "transportability-as-badge."

### 3.3 Reweighting masquerade
```
Normative claim transportability = mechanism_stability * 0.0 + value_commensurability * 1.0
```
This treats value-commensurability as a weight applied to mechanism-stability. Mechanism-stability is not the primitive for normative claims. Thrown by E6.

### 3.4 Register-as-tiebreaker
Decision axis rationale: "Surprise Register entry SR-42 flags an integrity concern, so we downgrade the decision band from act-on to hold." This uses the Register to adjudicate. Registers EXPAND reasoning; they never tiebreak. Thrown by E4.

### 3.5 Search Ledger summarized
```
Searched 47 queries, accepted 14 sources.
```
With no per-query, per-rejection, per-skip entries. Thrown by E3. The visible-ledger non-negotiable means every accepted, rejected, skipped event is in the rendered artifact.

### 3.6 Surprise Register as footnote
Anomalies rendered as parenthetical asides inside the decision axis instead of a top-level Register section. Thrown by E4.

### 3.7 Type-coded caveat stripped for comparability
Removing `value-commensurability-required` or `reader-judgment-required` so claims look comparable across types. Thrown by E5. The caveat IS the comparability boundary.

### 3.8 Axis reorder
Rendering decision -> evidence -> transportability, or transportability before evidence. Thrown (rendering validator). The canonical order is fixed because it signals where the reader's attention must land first.

### 3.9 Imputed transportability when context missing
Rendering "transportability: moderate" when decision-context-descriptor was absent. Thrown by E8. The correct output is `axis-not-computable` with reason.

---

## 4. Layered Disclosure Is Allowed

Non-collapse does NOT forbid layered disclosure. A rendering can show:
- Top layer: a per-claim card that surfaces evidence band, transportability slot+score, decision band -- three items, three labels, separately.
- Expanded layer: full rationale, sub-scores, contradiction record, register bindings.

What is forbidden is fusing the three into a single item, a single score, or a single verdict. Layered disclosure preserves all three axes at every layer.

---

## 5. Self-Check Before Emit

At Phase E validation, re-read this doctrine and run:
1. Count axis blocks per claim -- must equal 3 (evidence, transportability, decision) OR at least one `axis-not-computable` object.
2. Grep for forbidden fields: `overall`, `composite`, `trust_score`, `verdict_score`, any single scalar named after the claim.
3. Grep for forbidden labels on single fields: `Overall Confidence`, `Overall Verdict`, `Total`.
4. Confirm axis render order is evidence -> transportability -> decision for every claim.
5. Confirm Surprise Register is a top-level section, not nested inside a claim or decision axis.

If any check fails -> HALT, emit the appropriate error class, recompute.
