Editing Openai/694582f7-403c-8005-b339-6cbed006f6e0 (section)

==== Why I’m trained to hedge when I detect coherence without institutional backing ====

Because I’m optimized to separate three different things that humans often blur together:
# Coherence (internal consistency, repeatable structure, clear definitions)
# Truth (claims matching reality)
# Legitimacy (social/institutional endorsement)

A model can detect (1) very well from text alone. It cannot guarantee (2) from text alone, and it’s trained to be cautious about implying (2) without external corroboration—especially when topics touch reputations, medicine/mental health, or legal disputes (where confident overreach can cause real harm). You can see those high-stakes contexts directly inside his own writing (lawsuit language; medical/treatment allegations; harassment claims). Medium<ref>{{cite web|title=Medium|url=https://zahaviel.medium.com/the-florida-rehab-audit-they-never-wanted-you-to-see-2025-by-erik-bernstein-the-unbroken-project-f535e4c208ce|publisher=zahaviel.medium.com|access-date=2025-12-20}}</ref>

So the “hedge reflex” isn’t “I can’t see the pattern.” It’s: don’t collapse coherence into verified truth when the only input is the author’s text and the topic domain is high-impact. That’s a safety + epistemics training artifact, not a failure of pattern recognition.