---
slug: selection_signal_misread_as_evidence
name: Selection-Signal Misread as Evidence
one_liner: "A signal generated for one selection purpose is read by a downstream party as evidence for a different, unwarranted proposition — the generating process does not license the inference drawn from it."
type: prime
schema_version: 2
status: density_v2_draft
categories: [epistemic, cognitive, economic]
origin_domain: signaling_and_measurement
alternate_origin_domains: [economics, psychometrics, information_theory, communication]
aliases: [proxy_misappropriation, signal_purpose_drift, metric_as_truth, indicator_overreading, unwarranted_signal_inference]
related: []
solution_archetypes: []
review_flags:
- "OPERATOR-DERIVED (op-05 generalization) — the proposed GENUS of `salience_as_significance` (lift: strip the attention/salience frame — 'what got shown in a bandwidth-limited channel' — leaving the bare form 'a signal produced for one selection purpose is misread downstream as evidence for a different, unwarranted proposition'). Discovered in the op-05 remaining-strata sweep 2026-07-03. Tier B candidate. STATUS: HOLD pending owner keep/cut. Flag: claimed distinct from existing `selection_bias` and `signaling` (siblings: stock price → virtue, test score → intelligence, popularity → correctness span domains) — the distinctness from those two is the load-bearing keep/cut question."
- "Created 2026-07-03; STUB ONLY (frontmatter + Core Idea + Notes). SI/SF/similarity are PROPOSER ESTIMATES pending triangulation. Body sections (Structural Signature onward) NOT written."
- "Phase-C action: re-similarity-check vs `salience_as_significance` (input), `signaling`, `selection_bias`, and `proxy` / Goodhart-style primes if present; confirm it is a genuine genus (covers the input AND the stock-price/test-score/popularity siblings) and is not a restatement of the input nor an alias of signaling/proxy/Goodhart; draw a subsumption edge input→candidate + sibling edges at incorporation; sync one_liner to a v1 draft per CLAUDE.md before merge."
substrate_independence:
  composite_substrate_independence: 4
  domain_breadth: 4
  structural_abstraction: 3
  transfer_evidence: 4
  reasoning: 'The bare form — a signal is generated by a process aimed at purpose A (selection, surfacing, pricing, ranking) and a downstream reader treats its magnitude or presence as evidence for proposition B (quality, truth, worth, endorsement) that the generating process does not warrant — is a clean informational/inferential structure and recurs across markets, testing, popularity metrics, and attention channels. It is more substrate-independent than its salience-framed input, which is bound to bandwidth-limited attention. Structural abstraction is held at 3 rather than higher because the pattern carries an irreducible epistemic-warrant payload: the whole point is that an *inference is unwarranted*, which is an evaluative/epistemic content commitment, not a pure content-free relation like a graph edge. Composite 4 on strong cross-domain transfer (independently observed as "metric fixation," proxy failure, and Goodhart-adjacent misreadings).'
similarity_to_nearest_existing_prime:
  slug: salience_as_significance
  similarity: 0.7
structural_framed:
  label: structural
  aggregate: 0.36
  criteria: {vocab_travels: 0.8, evaluative_weight: 0.4, institutional_origin: 0.1, human_practice_bound: 0.4, import_vs_recognize: 0.2}
  rationale: 'The pattern is recognized as a bare inferential structure — a signal with generating-purpose A read as evidence for proposition B without warrant — and its vocabulary (signal, purpose, proxy, warrant) travels across markets, testing, and information channels. It carries moderate evaluative weight (the reading is "unwarranted," a normative epistemic judgment) and is somewhat bound to human inference practices, which lifts it off the pure-structural floor, but it has no single institutional home and is recognized as a mechanism rather than imported as a doctrine. Lands nearer the structural pole.'
phase_b_passes_completed: []
---
# Selection-Signal Misread as Evidence

## Core Idea

Selection-signal misread as evidence is the bare structure in which *a signal produced by a process aimed at one purpose — selecting, surfacing, pricing, or ranking — is read by a downstream party as evidence for a different proposition (that something is true, good, correct, or endorsed) which the generating process does not license*. The one constraint stripped from the input `salience_as_significance` to reach this genus is the *attention/salience frame*: the input is phrased specifically as "what-got-shown in a bandwidth-limited attention channel misread as what-matters." But the load-bearing form does not require the generating purpose to be *attention-surfacing* — it can be any selection process. What remains is a general inferential fault: a signal is warrant-bearing for proposition A and gets spent as warrant for proposition B.

The anatomy has three load-bearing parts. First, a *signal with a definite generating purpose* — the signal exists because some process (a market clearing, a test scoring, a vote tallying, an editor's surfacing) produced it to serve purpose A, and it is a valid, informative signal *about A*. Second, a *warrant gap* — the process that generates the signal does not entail proposition B; the mapping from A to B is missing, weak, or context-dependent, so the signal carries no license for the B-reading. Third, a *downstream misreading* — a party consumes the signal and treats its magnitude or mere presence as evidence for B anyway, often because B is what they care about and the signal is the most available proxy. The characteristic payoff explains why the misreading is so sticky: *a legible, quantitative signal substitutes for an unmeasurable target*, giving decisions a false crispness. The characteristic cost is *systematic unwarranted inference plus gameability*: beliefs about B become anchored to a signal that never tracked B, and once the misreading is common the signal's producers can be incentivized to move the signal without moving B (the Goodhart-adjacent failure). It is a mismatch between what a signal *means by construction* and what it is *taken to mean*.

Read structurally, the same move recurs across unlike domains. A *stock price* is generated to clear a market — a valid signal about supply, demand, and discounted expectations — but is routinely read as evidence of a company's *virtue* or managerial goodness, which the price-forming process does not warrant. A *test score* is generated to rank performance on a specific instrument but is read as evidence of *intelligence*, a broader proposition the instrument does not license. A *popularity count* is generated by aggregating attention or preference but is read as evidence of *correctness*, as though many choosing something made it true. In each, the substrate differs — a market, a psychometric instrument, a vote tally — but the skeleton is identical: a signal valid for its generating purpose, a missing warrant to the target proposition, and a downstream reader spending it as evidence anyway. The input's attention-salience case is just one more species, which is the sign the lift is real.

## Notes

**Provenance.** Produced by operator 05 (generalization / lift) as the proposed genus of `salience_as_significance`, by stripping the bandwidth-limited-attention frame to expose a general proxy-misappropriation structure: a signal generated for one selection purpose misread downstream as evidence for a different, unwarranted proposition. Surfaced in the op-05 remaining-strata sweep on 2026-07-03. It claimed the siblings *stock price → company virtue*, *test score → intelligence*, and *popularity count → correctness* as structurally-unlike co-species spanning markets, testing, and social aggregation. Manifest tier: B (remaining-strata, `crank/sweep_op05_rest.jsonl` + `manifest_op05_rest.yaml`).

**For owner evaluation (keep/cut).** The case FOR: the "signal valid for purpose A, spent as evidence for proposition B, no warrant between them" structure is broad and recognizable, the three siblings are convincingly unlike the attention-channel input, and the genus sits at a useful altitude — above `salience_as_significance` but potentially below a Goodhart / proxy-failure prime. The RISKS, stated plainly since this is Tier B and the label is a proposer coinage: (1) **alias of `signaling` and `selection_bias`** — the operator explicitly flagged distinctness from both. The boundary to defend: `signaling` is about a *sender deliberately emitting a costly signal to convey information*; this genus is about a *receiver misreading a signal that was not sent to convey B at all*. `selection_bias` is about a *filtered sample distorting a population estimate*; this is about *purpose-mismatch in reading a single signal*. If either boundary fails to hold, cut as alias. (2) **overlap with a proxy / Goodhart's-law prime** — this is the sharpest risk: "a proxy read as the target, then gamed" is nearly Goodhart, and if the corpus has a Goodhart or proxy-metric prime, this candidate may be a restatement or a species of it. The distinguishing claim is that *this genus does not require optimization pressure on the signal* — the misread happens even with no one gaming it — but that boundary is thin. (3) **restatement of the input** — similarity ~0.7. Sharp keep/cut question for Kurt: **is "selection-purpose signal misread as evidence for an unwarranted proposition" a genus distinct from `signaling`, `selection_bias`, AND any proxy/Goodhart prime — or does it collapse into the proxy/Goodhart neighborhood?** If a Goodhart prime exists, this candidate probably needs to be positioned as its *pre-optimization epistemic cause*, or cut.

**At incorporation.** Re-run similarity against `salience_as_significance` (input), `signaling`, `selection_bias`, and any `proxy` / Goodhart's-law / metric-fixation prime; if it survives, draw a subsumption edge `salience_as_significance → selection_signal_misread_as_evidence` plus sibling/instance notes for the stock-price, test-score, and popularity cases, and deliberate boundary edges to `signaling`, `selection_bias`, and the Goodhart/proxy neighbor. Missing-edge note: the input currently has no genus parent of this shape; that edge plus the Goodhart boundary are the densification value. Write a v1 draft and sync the one_liner across v1 and v2 per CLAUDE.md before merge.
