Recognizing a correction at its point of origin does not establish that it remains effective once personal state has been copied, summarized, exported, or already used.
Research Poster · When Correction Cannot Catch the System
When Correction Cannot Catch the System: Temporal Adequacy of Human Authority Over Consequential Personal State
Micheal Charles Preble · Independent Researcher · SSRN 7514120
Problem · Background · Research Question
Occupies a narrow gap between six neighboring literatures: machine unlearning, temporal-authorship scholarship, authorization propagation, capability-coherence analysis, privacy policy, and consumer-reporting law.
When does an accepted correction of consequential personal state retain sufficient causal reach to count as effective human authority?
Framework: the formal test
A system preserves temporally adequate human authority over consequential personal state only when an accepted corrective act can be traced to identified materially consequential reliance paths and, within an interval proportionate to the risk of continued reliance, brings those paths into an appropriate governed state.
Central diagram
Correction acceptedCorrective-latency intervalReliance paths governed
Invalidation
Revalidation
Retirement
Remedy
Propositions / Observable Implications
- Validity-effectiveness separation: acceptance of a correction at the source does not establish that consequential reliance has been governed.
- Corrective-latency proposition: authority becomes practically weaker when stale state can produce an unmitigated material effect before correction reaches the reliance point.
- Dependency proposition: effective correction becomes harder as reliance becomes more numerous, opaque, persistent, or institutionally dispersed.
- Temporal-adequacy proposition: meaningful corrective authority requires risk-appropriate invalidation, revalidation, retirement, or remedy across identified reliance paths.
Evidence Required
A bounded legal analogue, not new empirical data: under the FCRA, a furnisher's internal knowledge does not necessarily satisfy its statutory duty once notice-and-investigation triggers arise (Saunders v. BB&T 2008; Gorman v. Wolpoff 2009; Seamans v. Temple 2014), while Frazier v. Dovenmuehle (2023) and Sprague v. Salisbury Bank (2020) mark the limits of that duty.
Limitations
Reports no empirical result of its own. Does not require universal synchronization or automatic reversal. Some parties lie beyond an operator's practical control — temporal adequacy requires a defensible account of the boundary, not omniscience.
Falsifiers / Open Questions
The paper's contribution would be redundant if shown to be fully subsumed by one of its six named neighboring literatures; its explicit positioning against each is what keeps the claim bounded. The related experimental program that would test corrective latency empirically remains in design.
Citation / QR
Suggested citation
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.
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.
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