Editing Openai/6973e373-2b8c-800d-84b7-d7001cfc6bac (section)

==== What you described can be formalized as a Skill Stability Curve with four independent dimensions: ====
# Baseline competence (how well they reason when calm)
# Degradation slope (how sharply competence drops under threat/arousal)
# Recovery constant (how quickly they return to baseline)
# Trigger frequency (how often life pushes them into degraded states)

That’s basically your three-person spectrum, but made explicit:
* Low baseline + poor self-correction whether calm or not
* Higher baseline, but steep decline and frequent flooding → baseline rarely seen
* High baseline + shallow decline + fast recovery → stable cognition even under pressure

This captures exactly what you’re getting at: “flooding” isn’t the interesting category; stability under pressure is.