Concept Explainer · When Correction Cannot Catch the System
Temporal adequacy, explained
A concise reference for readers who want the core distinction without reading the full paper.
What is the difference between correction validity and correction effectiveness?
A correction is valid when the authoritative process accepts that prior information is no longer current, accurate, authorized, applicable, or uncontested — a system can truthfully report that a record was amended or a permission revoked. A correction is effective when materially consequential reliance on the superseded state is also governed, not silently continuing as though nothing changed. These are separate questions, and a correction can satisfy the first without satisfying the second.
What is temporal adequacy?
The governance test this paper develops for that gap: a system preserves temporally adequate human authority only when an accepted correction can be traced to the specific reliance paths it should affect, and reaches an appropriate governed state for each — within a time interval proportionate to the risk that continued reliance poses.
What is corrective latency?
The interval between a correction becoming authoritative and a given reliance path reaching its appropriate governed state. It is not database-replication time, not a predictive model, and does not imply every path must converge simultaneously — a stale entertainment preference can tolerate delay that a superseded eligibility status cannot.
What are the four outcomes after correction?
- Invalidation — stops superseded state from being relied upon for future action.
- Revalidation — asks whether a dependent result remains justified once the upstream state changed.
- Retirement — historical state may remain stored (for audit, legal retention, safety investigation) while ceasing to function as current authority.
- Remedy — addresses a consequence that already occurred and cannot be prevented after the fact.
What is actually claimed?
That correction validity and correction effectiveness are analytically separate; that four distinct outcomes can be required after a correction, rather than one universal command to erase or reverse; and that a bounded legal analogue (the FCRA) already recognizes something like this distinction in one narrow domain.
What remains unproven?
The framework reports no empirical result. Whether specific technical mechanisms can reliably achieve temporal adequacy at scale, and the related experimental program that would test corrective latency directly, remain in design.
Where can readers go deeper?
The canonical paper record · Research brief · Timeline research map · Consequence · What does revocation mean if downstream effects continue?
Preble, Micheal Charles. “When Correction Cannot Catch the System: Temporal Adequacy of Human Authority Over Consequential Personal State” Release manuscript, September 23, 2026. SSRN 7514120, submitted to SSRN, 2026.