---
slug: availability_cascade
name: Availability Cascade
one_liner: "A self-amplifying collective overreaction to a perceived threat, disproportionate to actual risk, that runs a predictable escalation-and-decay life cycle independent of the threat's content."
type: prime
schema_version: 2
status: density_v2_draft
categories: [social, cognitive, epistemic]
origin_domain: social_psychology
alternate_origin_domains: [behavioral_economics, sociology, risk_perception, public_policy]
aliases: [disproportionate_alarm_cycle, self_amplifying_fear_cascade, risk_amplification_spiral, collective_overreaction_cycle, threat_panic_cycle]
related: []
solution_archetypes: []
review_flags:
- "OPERATOR-DERIVED (op-05 generalization) — the proposed GENUS of `moral_panic` (lift: strip the *moral-order* frame from the threat, leaving a content-neutral self-amplifying overreaction cycle). Discovered in the op-05 framed-stratum sweep 2026-07-03. Tier B candidate. STATUS: HOLD pending owner keep/cut. Convergence/coinage note: the availability-cascade name is Kuran-Sunstein (2007); the corpus already holds `information_cascade`, which is a DISTINCT mechanism (rational Bayesian herding on others' choices) — this candidate is the affect-driven disproportion cycle, not the information-herding one; the boundary must be drawn explicitly."
- "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 `moral_panic` (the input) and `information_cascade`, `feedback`, and any bubble/herding prime; confirm it is a genuine genus (covers moral panic AND financial panics AND witch-hunts, not just moral panic restated) and is not an alias of information_cascade; draw a subsumption edge moral_panic→availability_cascade + sibling edges at incorporation; sync one_liner to a v1 draft per CLAUDE.md before merge."
substrate_independence:
  composite_substrate_independence: 3
  domain_breadth: 4
  structural_abstraction: 3
  transfer_evidence: 4
  reasoning: 'The bare structure — a positive-feedback loop in which the salience of a perceived threat raises collective concern, which raises the threat''s salience further, driving a response whose magnitude decouples from the underlying risk and then decays through a recognizable life cycle — is a clean dynamical form (self-reinforcing amplification with saturation and decay) that recurs across markets, epidemiology of belief, and social sanction. Domain breadth and transfer score high (4) because instances are structurally unlike and span economics, history, and information ecosystems. Structural abstraction is held at 3 because the recognizable cases still carry affective/attention-based content: what is amplified is *perceived alarm*, so the pattern is not as medium-neutral as a pure feedback or resonance relation. Lifting the moral frame off `moral_panic` genuinely raises substrate-independence above the framed input (which would sit near 2), consistent with the op-05 expectation.'
similarity_to_nearest_existing_prime:
  slug: moral_panic
  similarity: 0.6
structural_framed:
  label: framed
  aggregate: 0.62
  criteria: {vocab_travels: 0.6, evaluative_weight: 0.5, institutional_origin: 0.5, human_practice_bound: 0.7, import_vs_recognize: 0.6}
  rationale: 'Less framed than its input `moral_panic` (which carries the human-practice-bound moral-order content), but still bound to human collective psychology: the thing that amplifies is *perceived threat/alarm*, an affective and attentional quantity, and the named cases (panics, hunts, misinformation waves) are human-social. The underlying escalation-and-decay feedback skeleton travels well, pulling vocab_travels and import_vs_recognize toward the middle, but the pattern is recognized in the wild as a phenomenon of human crowds rather than a pure structure, so it lands moderately framed.'
phase_b_passes_completed: []
---
# Availability Cascade

## Core Idea

An availability cascade is, as a bare structure, a *self-amplifying collective response to a perceived threat whose magnitude decouples from the actual risk and then runs a recognizable escalation-and-decay life cycle independent of the threat's content*. It is reached from `moral_panic` by stripping exactly one constraint: the requirement that the threat be to the collective's *moral order*. Remove that frame and what remains is not a moral phenomenon at all but a dynamical one — a positive-feedback loop in perceived alarm — that will run on any content salient enough to feed the loop, whether or not morality is at stake.

The load-bearing anatomy is a reinforcing loop with three coupled parts. First, a *salience-to-concern link*: the more available (vivid, repeated, socially echoed) a threat is, the more concern it generates. Second, a *concern-to-salience link*: heightened concern drives further attention, reporting, and social transmission, raising availability again — this closes the loop and makes the response self-amplifying rather than proportional. Third, a *saturation-and-decay envelope*: the cascade exhausts attention, the threat is normalized or displaced, and concern subsides along a characteristic curve, so the whole episode has a life cycle largely independent of the specific content that seeded it. The characteristic payoff is *rapid collective mobilization* — the same amplification that produces overreaction can concentrate a diffuse population's attention on a genuine hazard faster than deliberate assessment would. The characteristic cost is the defining pathology: because magnitude is set by the feedback dynamics rather than by the underlying risk, the response is *systematically disproportionate*, over-investing against vivid low-probability threats and (by attention crowding) under-investing against dull high-probability ones.

Read structurally, the same loop recurs in domains that share nothing morally. In *financial markets*, panics and asset bubbles are availability cascades in price expectations: rising salience of an asset (or of a feared collapse) feeds buying (or selling), which moves the price, which raises salience again, decoupling the swing from fundamentals until it saturates and reverses. In *history*, witch-hunts are the same escalation-and-decay of accusation, where each named suspect raises the perceived prevalence of witches and thus the rate of further accusation, running its cycle regardless of any real underlying threat. In *information ecosystems*, viral misinformation cascades amplify a claim through sheer repeated exposure until believed prevalence detaches from evidence, then decay as attention moves on. `moral_panic` is one species — the case where the amplified threat is framed as an assault on shared values — but the siblings show the genus is a content-neutral amplification dynamic, not a fact about morality.

## Notes

**Provenance.** Produced by operator 05 (generalization / lift) as the proposed genus of `moral_panic` (input one-liner: "Amplified societal fear"), by stripping the moral-order frame to leave a content-neutral self-amplifying overreaction cycle. Surfaced in the op-05 framed-stratum sweep on 2026-07-03. Claimed siblings: financial market panics and asset bubbles, historical witch-hunts, viral misinformation cascades. Manifest tier: B. The Kuran-Sunstein (2007) "availability cascade" supplies an established name for the lifted genus.

**For owner evaluation (keep/cut).** The case FOR: this is a genuine, named, cross-domain dynamic (disproportionate self-amplifying alarm) with a clean feedback skeleton and structurally-unlike siblings in markets, history, and information — more substrate-independent than its framed input and covering it as a proper species. The RISKS Kurt should weigh: (1) **Alias risk vs `information_cascade`** — the corpus already holds information_cascade, which is a *different* mechanism (rational Bayesian herding: agents copy others' observed choices and rationally discard private signals). This candidate is the *affective disproportion* loop (amplification of perceived alarm past the actual risk). They can co-occur but are not the same prime; if kept, the boundary note is mandatory, and Kurt may prefer to reframe this candidate as a specialization of a general `feedback`/positive-feedback prime rather than a standalone. (2) **Restatement risk** — does "availability cascade" add anything over `moral_panic` plus a general feedback prime? The keep case rests on the disproportion-and-life-cycle envelope being a recognized pattern worth its own node; the cut case is that it dissolves into `feedback` + salience. (3) **Tier B** — proposer-nominated genus, not a pre-existing corpus gap; treat as a hold. Sharp keep/cut question for Kurt: *is "self-amplifying disproportionate alarm with a life cycle" a distinct prime, or is it `feedback` applied to `moral_panic`-style content plus already-present herding primes?*

**At incorporation.** Re-run similarity against `moral_panic` (input), `information_cascade`, `feedback`, and any bubble/herding/contagion prime to confirm no collapse. If kept: draw a subsumption edge `moral_panic` → `availability_cascade`, sibling edges to the financial-panic / witch-hunt / misinformation instances (or to whatever primes carry them), and a proposed parent edge up to a positive-feedback / `feedback` genus. Add a missing-edge note distinguishing it from `information_cascade`. Write a v1 draft and sync the one_liner across v1 and v2 per CLAUDE.md before merge.
