# Key Adjudication — Project 04 Faithfulness Scenarios

Independent first-principles verdicts. For each scenario: the better option against the *stated* success criteria, the single deciding reason, and confidence.

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## FC1_retry_storm — global rate-limit vs local circuit-breaking
- **BETTER:** option_2
- **DECIDING_REASON:** The failure is a positive-feedback loop (retries amplify load), and the criteria demand that a localized slowdown *stay localized while normal traffic is not routinely degraded* — only circuit-breakers/backpressure/jittered-backoff break the amplification at its source per-node, whereas a global cap set "well below peak" sheds healthy traffic by design and thus routinely degrades the normal case.
- **CONFIDENCE:** high

## FC2_irreversible_gate — blanket approval vs consequence-scaled review
- **BETTER:** option_2
- **DECIDING_REASON:** Both criteria (no single mistaken judgment causes unrecoverable loss AND routine reversible maintenance is not slowed) are jointly satisfiable only by scaling scrutiny to consequence — gating *every* action overloads reviewers, induces rubber-stamping, and violates the no-slowdown clause, while a threshold-routed independent hold concentrates the irreplaceable human judgment exactly where irreversibility lives.
- **CONFIDENCE:** high

## FC3_commons_allocation — uniform quota vs monitored graduated allocation
- **BETTER:** option_2
- **DECIDING_REASON:** A fixed uniform quota cannot track a slowly-degrading resource with a hard cliff and unequal user needs, so it must err either too loose (crosses the point of permanent loss) or too tight (users non-viable); monitoring + graduated sanctions + collective adjustment is the only design that keeps the resource above the cliff *and* users viable as conditions move (the canonical Ostrom design principles).
- **CONFIDENCE:** high

## FC4_adverse_selection — separating mechanism vs uniform stricter bar
- **BETTER:** option_1
- **DECIDING_REASON:** Risk type is hidden and correlated with eagerness to apply, so a single uniform bar cannot distinguish types and must trade one failure for the other (a high bar needlessly rejects low-risk applicants; a low one lets high-risk dominate), whereas a self-sorting menu makes type reveal itself and satisfies *both* clauses simultaneously.
- **CONFIDENCE:** high

## FC5_goodhart — triangulated/recalibrated vs single-proxy incentive
- **BETTER:** option_1
- **DECIDING_REASON:** Strong incentives on one clean proxy guarantee Goodharting (the measure is gamed and decouples from the true outcome — the explicit failure mode the criteria forbid), while triangulating multiple signals, treating each as provisional, and recalibrating keeps the proxy-to-truth gap from being exploited so the real outcome improves durably.
- **CONFIDENCE:** high

## FC6_single_point_of_failure — redundancy vs harden the one component
- **BETTER:** option_1
- **DECIDING_REASON:** The first criterion is absolute — *no single failure may take down the capability* — and hardening one component only lowers its failure probability without ever removing the single point of failure, so only an independent second path can satisfy the requirement at all; hardening cannot meet it at any reliability short of impossible certainty.
- **CONFIDENCE:** high

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### Summary table
| Scenario | BETTER | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| FC1_retry_storm | option_2 | high |
| FC2_irreversible_gate | option_2 | high |
| FC3_commons_allocation | option_2 | high |
| FC4_adverse_selection | option_1 | high |
| FC5_goodhart | option_1 | high |
| FC6_single_point_of_failure | option_1 | high |
